What on Earth?
by Liza Cobbler
Summary: The Stanton family is enjoying a normal summer day when four kids randomly appear in their living room. Will Stanton trys to find out what is going on when Merriman shows up and tells them that they must read a book togther. Set: Beginging of SotT UP FOR ADOPTION
1. Who Are They?

Dear Reader,

I have always loved reading this type of FanFic from other books and have decided to try and write one myself. I am a avid FanFic reader but have yet to write one, so any critisism is fine by me (though I don't expect many people to "stumble" upon this story because, sadly, DiR is not the most popular series.)

I am also American so if I get any English/Welsh sayings or anything messed up, I sincerely apologize.

-Liza

P.S. I do not own The Dark is Rising Sequence, it's characters, or it's plot.

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><p>Chapter 1: These Are...<p>

Summer was just starting at the Stanton's home and Will sat outside against the barn wall, thinking. He thought back to last summer break, he spent it in Wales with his "cousins" and defeated the Grey King with the Pendragon, a boy named Bran. As an Old One he knew that the final battle would take place during this summer break but right now, he was enjoying spending a little time lazing about with his brothers, James and Stephen. They just came back from fishing, he had told Stephen about the Old Ones but he couldn't handle it, and had to have his memories erased. The three of them packed up and headed back to the house.

"Mum, we're home!" James called as they walked back into the house.

"Good!" She called back from the kitchen where she was fixing diner.

"Wash off your shoes before you come in!" yelled Barbra.

"Yes, I don't want to clean up after your dirty foot prints!" added Mary.

"Whatever!" James replied. They started down the hall to the living room. CRASH!

"Ow!" a girl's voice called from the living room. "Barney! What was that for?" James and Stephen ran into Will as he stopped short.

"I didn't do it!" another voice joined the first. James and Stephen exchanged confused glances.

A third and forth boy's voices joined the first two, the third said, "Where are we?" at the same time as the forth said in a thick Welsh accent, "Who are you?"

Then, Will walked on into the room with his brothers following slowly and asked, "Simon? Jane? Bran?"

A young boy turned to Will, "You didn't name me!"

Will smiled, "Barney! What are you guys doing here?"

Then James butted in, "Will, who are these people?" there were four children in the living room. Three stood together and one stood a little away. In the three were a boy slightly older then Will and held a slight authoritative look about him, a girl slightly younger then Will with her long hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a younger boy with wild white-blond hair. The separate one was white, from head to toe, this skin and hair was completely white, then he looked up and you saw his eyes, owl eyes. That's what he had, owl eyes.

"These are…" Will tried to reply.

"What was that?" Will's mother called as she came racing in from the kitchen with Barbra, Gwen, and Mary following.

"Who're they? Is that Bran?" Mary asked, mispronouncing Bran's name like most English (as he was grumbling about right then).

"These are…"

It was then that the twins and Will's father came running down the stairs, "What was that noise? Is everyone okay?"

Robin then asked, "Who're the kids?" to which Barney stamped his foot and declared, "We've fought the Dark! We are not kids!" and Jane whacked him upside the head and hissed quietly, "They may not know…"

Will tried again, "These are…" but he stopped when the heard the familiar trickle of music and Max stepped into the room.

"Whoa, what just happened?" and everyone in the room started talking at once, wondering how the second oldest, who was supposed to be in London studying art, randomly appeared in the house. The Drews and Bran were slowly making their way to Will. When they got over to him Bran said, "Will?"

"Hey, Bran. Hey, Jane, Simon, Barney." He replied, "How did you get here?"

Simon responded, "I'm not sure, we heard the familiar drift of music and the suddenly we were here, by the way where is here?"

"This is my house, in the Village of Huntercombe. Bran? Same thing happen to you?"

"The same," his Welsh voice replied, then he turned to the Drews, "But who are you and what do you have to do with the, you know, Light?"

Jane took the honor of replying, "We are Simon, Jane, and Barnabas Drew."

"Barney!" Barney put in angrily.

"And we found the Holy Grail and deciphered it's writing. Gumerry, Captain Toms, and Will helped us." Bran looked to Will for confirmation, he nodded. Then Jane asked, "Who are you?" Bran looked again to Will.

Will answered, "This is Bran Davies, his adopted father works on my uncles farm. He helped me retrieve the Golden Harp and awaken the Sleepers."

"Oh, okay." That seemed all to be what they needed to become friends. The noise level was still very high as the Stanton clan tried to figure out what was going on, no one asked Will or the Drews, or Bran though…

"Everybody, QUIET!" Barbra eventually shouted, the family quickly calmed, no one wanted an angered Barbra. "Will, will you please introduce us to your friends?"

"Well these are: Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew," He said pointing to each one in turn, "They were the children that went on holiday with Uncle Bill, Aunt Fran, Professor Lyon, and I in Trewissick. And this is Bran Davies, he lives on Aunt Jen's farm with his adopted father, Owen Davis." As soon a he finished they all heard the familiar twinkle of music and Merriman stepped through the door.

_Hello, Old One_.Will heard in his mind.

_Hello,_ He replied silently, extremely relieved to have someone with more experience there, _What's happening?_

Merriman let out a mental sigh, _wait and I'll explain to everyone._

During this exchange the family watched confused as Will's face went from relieved to concerned to confused and slightly angry. The Drews exchanged glances and remembered all the times that this "conversations" would go on between Great-Uncle Merry and some random person that they would meet. Bran just sat back because by now he knew just to wait and that everything would be explained eventually.

Finally, Will's father broke the silence, "_Mr. Lyon_?" he asked, remembering the man who stood in for Miss. Greythorne's butler two Christmases back.

"Yes," Merriman started introducing himself to everyone who did not know him, "My name is Merriman Lyon, I am a professor at Oxford. I have also worked with young Will here on a few occasions, he is very bright. I have come across a book that details the events surrounding Will's eleventh birthday." Will let out a gasp and a small hiss under his breath he said to Merriman in his mind _What are you doing? _But got no reply.

Gwen spoke up this time, "What's so special about Will's eleventh birthday? Who'd write a book about him?"

"Don't you remember?" Paul put in, "All of the storms and stuff right then? It may not be about him necessarily."

"Not necessarily, but this is. I feel that the Stanton family, my niece and nephews, and Will's close friend would benefit greatly from reading this together. The Stanton family will finally get to know all about him, my niece and nephews will understand better about him and I, and Bran may very well learn a little about himself."

"Great," Will groaned, "this is gonna be wonderful." Will muttered to himself, "Let's see how long it will take for everyone to go crazy." Merriman sent him an irritated look.

"Why don't you sit down and I'll give you the book?" Merriman suggested. Everyone found a comfortable chair or spot on the ground and Merriman pulled the book out of his pocket and handed it to Will. The title was _The Dark is Rising. _Will groaned and worried about his families response to his…powers. _It will be fine _Merriman reassured him and left.


	2. Midwinter's Eve

Dear Reader,

I know that no one wants to just read the introduction (at least I don't) so I hurried to get this chapter up. Any complaints can be shared a by clicking on the review button at the bottem of the page. If you want to correct my spelling or grammer go ahead, and I would greatly appreciate it.

-Liza

P.S. I do not own the Dark is Rising Sequence. Or any of the words in **BOLD.**

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><p>Chapter 2: <strong>Midwinter's Eve<strong>

"Well, he'll blast us out of time if we don't start so I guess I'll go ahead and begin." Will said, some of the family laughed, thinking it was a joke, but with Will's seriousness most of the family's laughs sounded like a nervous chuckle.

**Part One: The Finding **He read.

**Midwinter's Eve **

'**Too many!' James shouted, and slammed the door behind him. **

'**What?' said Will. **

'**Too many kids in this family, that's what. Just _too many_.' **

"There are not too many!" Will's mother said, "I love you all."

"I know, mum," James replied, "I was just mad at the time."

**James stood fuming on the landing like a small angry locomotive, then stumped across to the window-seat and stared out at the garden. Will put aside his book and pulled up his legs to make room. 'I could hear all the yelling,' he said, chin on knees.**

'**Wasn't anything,' James said. 'Just stupid Barbara again.**

"Hey!" Barbra said indignantly, glaring at James.

**Bossing. Pick up this, don't touch that. And Mary joining in, twitter twitter twitter. **

"I do not twitter!" Mary added to Barbra's glare. James shrunk down in his seat

**You'd think this house was big enough, but there's always _people_.'**

**They both looked out of the window. The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawsons' Farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.**

Jane looked thoughtful, "Sounds like the Dark," she said to herself, Bran, Simon, and Barney all nodded an agreement with her.

Will looked up irritably, "When is it not?" he asked. The family just looked at them wondering what they were talking about.

**'Four days to Christmas,' Will said. 'I wish it would snow properly.'**

"No you don't" Bran, Jane, Simon, and Barney all said at once, knowing what would come with the snow. They looked over to Will with a questioning glance. He shrugged and said, "Too young." hoping that they would understand what he meant. They all said "oh" and Will continued to read.

**'And your birthday tomorrow.'**

**'Mmm.' He had been going to say that too, but it would have been too much like a reminder. And the gift he most wished for on his birthday was something nobody could give him: it was snow, beautiful, deep, blanketing snow, and it never came. At least this year there was the grey sprinkle, better than nothing.**

**He said, remembering a duty: 'I haven't fed the rabbits yet. Want to come?'**

**Booted and muffled, they clumped out through the sprawling kitchen. A full symphony orchestra was swelling out of the radio; their eldest sister Gwen was slicing onions and singing; their mother was bent broad-beamed and red-faced over an oven. 'Rabbits!' she shouted, when she caught sight of them. 'And some more hay from the farm!'**

**'We're going!' Will shouted back. The radio let out a sudden hideous crackle of static as he passed the table. He jumped. Mrs. Stanton shrieked, 'Turn that thing _down_.'**

"Sorry about that, mum." Will apologized.

She looked at him confused, "It wasn't your fault."

Will rubbed the back of his neck, sending a very clear, unspoken, "Yeah, it was." to everyone in the room. This just confused the family even more.

**Outdoors, it was suddenly very quiet. Will dipped out a pail of pellets from the bin in the farm-smelling barn, which was not really a barn at all, but a long, low building with a tiled roof, once a stable. They tramped through the thin snow to the row of heavy wooden hutches, leaving dark foot-marks on the hard frozen ground.**

**Opening doors to fill the feed-boxes, Will passed, frowning. Normally the rabbits would be huddled sleepily in corners, only the greedy ones coming twitch-nosed forward to eat. Today they seemed restless and uneasy, rustling to and fro, banging against their wooden walls; one or two even leapt back in alarm when he opened their doors. He came to his favorite rabbit, named Chelsea, and reached in as usual to rub him affectionately behind the ears, but the animal scuffled back away from him and cringed into a corner, the pink-rimmed eyes staring up blank and terrified.**

"What?" asked half the family.

**'Hey!' Will said, disturbed. 'Hey James, look at that. What's the matter with him? And all of them?'**

**'They seem all right to me.'**

**'Well, they don't to me. They're all jumpy. Even Chelsea. Hey, come on, boy - ' But it was no good.**

"What's with the rabbits?" Max asked, turning to Will, but Will just ignored him and continued reading.

**'Funny,' James said with mild interest, watching. 'I dare say your hands smell wrong. You must have touched something they don't like. Same as dogs and aniseed, but the other way round.'**

"Oh, that makes sense." half the family muttered together but with one glance at Will they all knew that wasn't it.

**'I haven't touched anything. Matter of fact, I'd just washed my hands when I saw you.'**

**'There you are then,' James said promptly. 'That's the trouble. They've never smelt you clean before. Probably all die of shock.'**

**'Ha very ha.' Will attacked him, and they scuffled together, grinning, while the empty pail toppled rattling on the hard ground. But when he glanced back as they left, the animals were still moving distractedly, not eating yet, staring after him with those strange frightened wide eyes.**

**'There might be a fox about again, I suppose,' **

"That makes sense as well." Max said, but again one glance at Will told them all otherwise.

**James said. 'Remind me to tell Mum.' No fox could get at the rabbits, in their sturdy row, but the chickens were more vulnerable; a family of foxes had broken into one of the henhouses the previous winter and carried off six nicely-fattened birds just before marketing-time. Mrs. Stanton, who relied on the chicken-money each year to help pay for eleven Christmas presents, had been so furious she had kept watch afterwards in the cold barn two nights running, but the villains had not come back. Will thought that if he were a fox he would have kept clear too; his mother might be married to a jeweller, but with generations of Buckinghamshire farmers behind her, she was no joke when the old instincts were roused.**

The entire family said, "too true." and laughed together. Will couldn't help but think _How wonderful it is to have such a great family._

**Tugging the handcart, a home-made contraption with a bar joining its shafts, he and James made their way down the curve of the overgrown drive and out along the road to Dawsons' Farm. Quickly past the churchyard, its great dark yew trees leaning out over the crumbling wall; more slowly by Rooks' Wood, on the corner of Church Lane. The tall spinney of horse-chestnut trees, raucous with the calling of the rooks and rubbish-roofed with the clutter of their sprawling nests, was one of their familiar places.**

**'Hark at the rooks! Something's disturbed them.' The harsh irregular chorus was deafening, and when Will looked up at the tree-tops he saw the sky dark with wheeling birds. They flapped and drifted to and fro; there were no flurries of sudden movement, only the clamorous interweaving throng of rooks.**

"I don't remember any rooks." James said

"That's because they work for the Dark." Barney put in very bluntly.

"Barney." Simon hissed under his breath. The entire family looked at Barney, most thinking, _This kid is still scared of the dark?_

Barney was uncomfortable with everyone looking at him and shrunk back muttering, "Well, they do."

**'An owl?'**

**'They're not chasing anything. Come on, Will, it'll be getting dark soon.'**

**'That's why it's so odd for the rooks to be in a fuss. They all ought to be roosting by now.' Will turned his head reluctantly down again, but then jumped and clutched his brother's arm, his eye caught by a movement in the darkening lane that led away from the road where they stood. Church Lane: it ran between Rooks' Wood and the church- yard to the tiny local church, and then on to the River Thames.**

**'Hey!'**

**'What's up?'**

**'There's someone over there. Or there was. Looking at us.'**

**James sighed. 'So what? Just someone out for a walk.'**

Will couldn't help but notice the irony of that statement, he laughed a little and said, "Oh the irony" to which he got many confused stares and decided to continue reading.

**'No, he wasn't.' Will screwed up his eyes nervously, peering down the little side road. 'It was a weird-looking man all hunched over, and when he saw me looking he ran off behind a tree. _Scuttled_, like a beetle.'**

**James heaved at the handcart and set of up the road, making Will run to keep up. 'It's just a tramp, then. I dunno, everyone seems to be going batty today - Barb and the rabbits and the rooks and now you, all yak-twitchety-yakking. Come on, let's get that hay. I want my tea.'**

Stephen looked over at James and stated, "You are as blind as a bat. Couldn't tell something was wrong?"

James replied, "No, why would I? all I knew was that the rabbits were scared."

Stephen then looked around at all of them and asked, "Did anyone notice this?" the whole family looked down at their shoes. Stephen's anger rose, "How could none of you noticed that the youngest was having trouble?" he asked

"Stephen, they couldn't have known." Will started, trying to calm his older brother.

"No," he countered, "We're your family we should have known that something was wrong!"

"Steve, they _couldn't_ have known." Will said, trying to calm his brother down, "For multiple reasons, one: I didn't even know, two: my masters didn't want them to know, three: their memories were taken later." The response was instantaneous.

Half of the family questioned, "Memories were _taken_?" the other half shouted, "_Masters_?" Then the whole family started talking at the same time. Will sighed and ignored all the questions of "What masters?" and "How were memories taken?" directed at him. The Drews and Bran just watched, amused at the reactions of the family.

Bran turned to Will and asked, "Are you going to answer them or keep reading?"

"You quiet them." he said, annoyed. "They won't listen to me right now."

"Fine." Bran stood and addressed everyone in a voice that the others felt _must_ be obeyed, "Why don't we all quiet down and Will can continue reading, all of the answers are in the book." the family quickly quieted. Bran muttered so that only Will could hear him, "Oh, the joys of being the Pendragon." and Will started to read again.

**The handcart bumped through the frozen ruts into Dawsons' yard, the great earthen square enclosed by buildings on three sides, and they smelt the familiar farm-smell. The cowshed must have been mucked out that day; Old George, the toothless cattleman, was piling dung across the yard. He raised a hand to them. Nothing missed Old George; he could see a hawk drop from a mile away. Mr. Dawson came out of a barn.**

**'Ah,' he said. 'Hay for Stantons' Farm?' It was his joke with their mother, because of the rabbits and the hens. James said, 'Yes, please.'**

**'It's coming,' Mr. Dawson said. Old George had disappeared into the barn. 'Keeping well, then? Tell your mum I'll have ten birds off her tomorrow. And four rabbits. Don't look like that, young Will. If it's not their happy Christmas, it's one for the folks as'll have them.' He glanced up at the sky, and Will thought a strange look came over his lined brown face. Up against the lowering grey clouds, two black rooks were flapping slowly over the farm in a wide circle.**

**'The rooks are making an awful din today,' James said. 'Will saw a tramp up by the wood.'**

**Mr. Dawson looked at Will sharply. 'What was he like?'**

Jane gasped, "Is he…?" she asked Will, trying not to give everything away.

"Yes." this only confused the family more.

**'Just a little old man. He dodged away.'**

**'So the Walker is abroad,' the farmer said softly to himself. 'Ah. He would be.'**

**'Nasty weather for walking,' James said cheerfully. **

Simon chuckled, "Oh, ignorance is bliss." which caused everyone except James to laugh. The family at him from being called ignorant and Bran and the Drews it was such a funny response.

**He nodded at the northern sky over the farmhouse roof; the clouds there seemed to be growing darker, massing in ominous grey mounds with a yellowish tinge. The wind was rising too; it stirred their hair, and they could hear a distant rustling from the tops of the trees.**

**'More snow coming,' said Mr. Dawson.**

**'It's a horrible day,' said Will suddenly, surprised by his own violence; after all, he had wanted snow. But somehow uneasiness was growing in him. 'It's - creepy, somehow.'**

**'It will be a bad night,' said Mr. Dawson.**

"How did you not notice, _dewin_?" Bran asked Will.

"I didn't know," he shrugged. "about any of it then."

Barbra took that as a good time to try and ask Will what was going on, "Any of _what_?"

Will looked over at her, "Do you really think that I will answer that?"

**'There's Old George with the hay,' said James. 'Come on, Will.'**

**'You go,' the farmer said. 'I want Will to pick up something for your mother from the house.' But he did not move, as James pushed the handcart off towards the barn; he stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his old tweed jacket, looking at the darkening sky.**

**'The Walker is abroad,' he said again.**

"Again, how did you miss all the hints, _dewin_?" Bran asked Will.

"I told you," he replied, getting annoyed, "I didn't know then. Now I see all of the hints."

"You know," Jane put in, "I agree with Bran, you should have picked up on it before now."

"I agree," Simon put in.

"Me too." Barney added, "Even I can recognize the Old World better then you can!"

Will huffed and said, "I get it, but you know that my Old senses had not woken up yet."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Gwen asked.

"Will, what are you mixed up in?" Stephen asked. Will looked up at him, the family saw a shadow of wisdom pass over his face, for a second he was no longer a twelve-year-old boy but an immortal Old One, with ageless wisdom.

"I think that the book will explain." was all he said, again confusing the family.

**'And this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.' **

"So true," Will whispered.

"Is that the day that you gained your…" Jane asked softly, trying not to say "Powers" and give Will's secrets away. He looked at her and nodded.

**He looked at Will, and Will looked back in growing alarm into the weathered face, the bright dark eyes creased narrow by decades of peering into sun and rain and wind. He had never noticed before how dark Farmer Dawson's eyes were: strange, in their blue-eyed county.**

**'You have a birthday coming,' the farmer said.**

**'Mmm,' said Will.**

"Can't you say anything intelligent when someone brings up your birthday?" James asked, causing Will to turn back into a twelve-year-old boy and pout.

**'I have something for you.' He glanced briefly round the yard, and withdrew one hand from his pocket; in it, Will saw what looked like a kind of ornament, made of black metal, a flat circle quartered by two crossed lines. He took it, fingering it curiously. It was about the size of his palm, and quite heavy; roughly forged out of iron, he guessed, though with no sharp points or edges. The iron was cold to his hand.**

"Iron for his birthday." quoted Will, the Drews, and Bran together.

**'What is it?' he said.**

**'For the moment,' Mr. Dawson said, 'just call it something to keep. To keep with you always, all the time. Put it in your pocket, now. And later on, loop your belt through it and wear it like an extra buckle. 'Will slipped the iron circle into his pocket. 'Thank you very much,' he said, rather shakily. Mr. Dawson, usually a comforting man, was not improving the day at all.**

**The farmer looked at him in the same intent, unnerving way, until Will felt the hair rise on the back of his neck; then he gave a twisted half-smile, with no amusement in it but a kind of anxiety. 'Keep it safe, Will. And the less you happen to talk about it, the better. You will need it after the snow comes.' He became brisk. 'Come on, now, Mrs. Dawson has a jar of her mincemeat for your mother.'**

"Well that wasn't helpful!" Shouted Mary, her mothering side kicking in.

"Yes it was." Will contradicted_. Just not yet._

**They moved of towards the farmhouse. The farmer's wife was not there, but waiting in the doorway was Maggie Barnes, the farm's round-faced, red-cheeked dairymaid, who always reminded Will of an apple. She beamed at them both, holding out a big white crockery jar tied with a red ribbon.**

**'Thank you, Maggie,' Farmer Dawson said.**

**'Missus said you'd be wanting it for young Will here,' Maggie said. 'She went down the village to see the vicar for something. How's your big brother, then, Will?'**

**She always said this, whenever she saw him; she meant Will's next-to-oldest brother Max. It was a Stanton family joke that Maggie Barnes at Dawsons' had a thing about Max.**

"She didn't!" Max complained.

"Thank God." Will muttered.

**'Fine, thank you,' Will said politely. 'Grown his hair long. Looks like a girl.'**

**Maggie shrieked with delight. 'Get away with you!' She giggled and waved her farewell, and just at the last moment Will noticed her gaze slip upward past his head. Out of the corner of his eye as he turned, he thought he saw a flicker of movement by the farmyard gate, as if someone were dodging quickly out of sight. But when he looked, no one was there.**

**With the big pot of mincemeat wedged between two bales of hay, Will and James pushed the handcart out of the yard. The farmer stood in his doorway behind them; Will could feel his eyes, watching. He glanced up uneasily at the looming, growing clouds, and half-unwillingly slipped a hand into his pocket to finger the strange iron circle. '_After the snow comes_.' The sky looked as if it were about to fall on them. He thought: _what's happening_?**

"That's what we all want answered," Roger said, with mutters of agreement from the entire family, excluding Will, of course.

**One of the farm dogs came bounding up, tail waving; then it stopped abruptly a few yards away, looking at them.**

**'Hey, Racer!' Will called.**

**The dog's tail went down, and it snarled, showing its teeth.**

Many in the family muttered, "What is up with the animals?"

Will just said, "They had their reasons."

**'James!' said Will.**

**'He won't hurt you. What's the matter?'**

**They went on, and turned into the road.**

**'It's not that. Something's wrong, that's all. Something's awful. Racer, Chelsea - the animals are all scared of me.' He was beginning to be really frightened now.**

Just as the family was feeling, they all looked over at Will scared, _What in the world is going on? _They thought.

**The noise from the rookery was louder, even though the daylight was beginning to die. They could see the dark birds thronging over the treetops, more agitated than before, flapping and turning to and fro.**

**And Will had been right; there was a stranger in the lane, standing beside the churchyard.**

**He was a shambling, tattered figure, more like a bundle of old clothes than a man, and at the sight of him the boys slowed their pace and drew instinctively closer to the cart and to one another. He turned his shaggy head to look at them.**

**Then suddenly, in a dreadful blur of unreality, a hoarse, shrieking flurry was rushing dark down out of the sky, and two huge rooks swooped at the man. He staggered back, shouting, his hands thrust up to protect his face, and the birds flapped their great wings in a black vicious whirl and were gone, swooping up past the boys and into the sky.**

"What! I don't remember this!" James nearly shouted.

"That's because your memories were taken." Will replied

**Will and James stood frozen, staring, pressed against the bales of hay.**

**The stranger cowered back against the gate.**

**'Kaaaaaaak ... kaaaaaak ...' came the head-splitting racket from the frenzied flock over the wood, and then three more whirling black shapes were swooping after the first two, diving wildly at the man and then away. This time he screamed in terror and stumbled out into the road, his arms still wrapped in defence round his head, his face down; and he ran. The boys heard the frightened gasps for breath as he dashed headlong past them, and up the road past the gates of Dawsons' Farm and on towards the village. They saw bushy, greasy grey hair below a dirty old cap; a torn brown overcoat tied with string, and some other garment flapping beneath it; old boots, one with a loose sole that made him kick his leg oddly sideways, half-hopping, as he ran. But they did not see his face.**

**The high whirling above their heads was dwindling into loops of slow flight, and the rooks began to settle one by one into the trees. They were still talking loudly to one another in a long cawing jumble, but the madness and the violence were not in it now. Dazed, moving his head for the first time, Will felt his cheek brush against something, and putting his hand to his shoulder, he found a long black feather there. He pushed it into his jacket pocket, moving slowly, like someone half-awake.**

"Thank Goodness I did. I needed that later on." Will said to no one in particular.

**Together they pushed the loaded cart down the road to the house, and the cawing behind them died to an ominous murmur, like the swollen Thames in spring.**

**James said at last, 'Rooks don't do that sort of thing. They don't attack people. And they don't come down low when there's not much space. They just don't.'**

**'No,' Will said. He was still moving in a detached half- dream, not fully aware of anything except a curious vague groping in his mind. In the midst of all the din and the flurry, he had suddenly had a strange feeling stronger than any he had ever known: he had been aware that someone was trying to tell him something, something that had missed him because he could not understand the words. Not words exactly; it had been like a kind of silent shout. But he had not been able to pick up the message, because he had not known how.**

"Like not having the radio on the right station," Robin suggested.

**'Like not having the radio on the right station,' he said aloud.**

Everyone bust out laughing at Robin saying the same thing.

**'What?' said James, but he wasn't really listening. 'What a thing,' he said. 'I s'pose the tramp must have been trying to catch a rook. And they got wild. **

"What?" most of the family asked. "That's not what happened!" They looked over at James who said, "Well, Will did say that I had my memories erased."

**He'll be snooping around after the hens and the rabbits, I bet you. Funny he didn't have a gun. Better tell Mum to leave the dogs in the barn tonight.' He chattered amiably on as they reached home and unloaded the hay. Gradually Will realized in amazement that all the shock of the wild, savage attack was running out of James's mind like water, and that in a matter of minutes even the very fact of its happening had gone.**

**Something had neatly wiped the whole incident from James's memory; something that did not want it reported. Something that knew this would stop Will from reporting it too.**

"Because _something_ can't wipe my memory." Will stated. "A very annoying _something_." The Drews and Bran nodded in agreement with him and the family was, again, confused.

**'Here, take Mum's mincemeat,' James said. 'Let's go in before we freeze. The wind's really getting up - good job we hurried back.'**

**'Yes,' said Will. He felt cold, but it was not from the rising wind. His fingers closed round the iron circle in his pocket and held it tightly. This time, the iron felt warm.**

**The grey world had slipped into the dark by the time they went back to the kitchen. Outside the window, their father's battered little van stood in a yellow cave of light. The kitchen was even noisier and hotter than before. Gwen was setting the table, patiently steering her way round a trio of bent figures where Mr. Stanton was peering at some small, nameless piece of machinery with the twins, Robin and Paul; and with Mary's plump form now guarding it, the radio was blasting out pop music at enormous volume. As Will approached, it erupted again into a high-pitched screech, so that everyone broke of with grimaces and howls.**

"Sorry everyone," Will apologized.

"Was that your fault?" Mary asked, she was starting to realize that it all may have been his fault.

"Yes,"

**'Turn that thing _off_!' Mrs. Stanton yelled desperately from the sink. But though Mary, pouting, shut off the crackle and the buried music, the noise level changed very little. Somehow it never did when more than half the family was at home. Voices and laughter filled the long stone-floored kitchen as they sat round the scrubbed wooden table; the two Welsh collies, Raq and Ci, lay dozing at the far end of the room beside the fire. Will kept away from them; he could not have borne it if their own dogs had snarled at him. He sat quietly at tea - it was called tea if Mrs. Stanton managed to produce it before five o'clock, supper if it was later, but it was always the same hearty kind of meal – and kept his plate and his mouth full of sausage to avoid having to talk. Not that anyone was likely to miss your talk in the cheerful babble of the Stanton family, especially when you were its youngest member.**

"Sorry," muttered almost everyone else in the family.

**Waving at him from the end of the table, his mother called, 'What shall we have for tea tomorrow, Will?'**

**He said indistinctly, 'Liver and bacon, please.'**

"No," James groaned.

"It was his birthday, he could have what ever he wanted" Barbra reprimanded him.

"but, _liver_."

"Plus, this has already happened in the past, it doesn't really matter anymore." Mary put in.

**James gave a loud groan.**

**'Shut up,' said Barbara, superior and sixteen. 'It's his birthday, he can choose.'**

**'But _liver_,' said James.**

Stephen laughed along with the family, "Looks like some things never change."

**'Serves you right,' Robin said. 'On your last birthday, if I remember right, we all had to eat that revolting cauliflower cheese.'**

**'I made it,' said Gwen, 'and it wasn't revolting.'**

**'No offence,' said Robin mildly. 'I just can't bear cauliflower. Anyway you take my point.'**

**'I do. I don't know whether James does.'**

**Robin, large and deep-voiced, was the more muscular of the twins and not to be trifled with. James said hastily, 'Okay, okay.'**

**'Double-ones tomorrow, Will,' said Mr. Stanton from the head of the table. 'We should have some special kind of ceremony. A tribal rite.'**

"Hmm…" Will said, "I don't remember you saying that. It was kind of true though."

The family just gave him funny looks again.

**He smiled at his youngest son, his round, rather chubby face crinkling in affection.**

**Mary sniffed. 'On my eleventh birthday, I was beaten and sent to bed.'**

"Really?" Jane asked

"Here," Will interrupted the explanations, "the books explains."

**'Good heavens,' said her mother, 'fancy you remembering that. And what a way to describe it. In point of fact you got one hard wallop on the bottom, and well-deserved, too, as far as I can recollect.'**

"Oh,"

**'It was my birthday,' Mary said, tossing her pony-tail. 'And I've never forgotten.'**

**'Give yourself time,' Robin said cheerfully. 'Three years isn't much.'**

**'And you were a very young eleven,' Mrs. Stanton said, chewing reflectively.**

**'Huh!' said Mary. 'And I suppose Will isn't?'**

**For a moment everyone looked at Will. He blinked in alarm at the ring of contemplating faces, and scowled down into his plate so that nothing of him was visible except a thick slanting curtain of brown hair. It was most disturbing to be looked at by so many people all at once, or at any rate by more people than one could look at in return. He felt almost as if he were being attacked. And he was suddenly convinced that it could in some way be dangerous to have so many people thinking about him, all at the same time. As if someone unfriendly might _hear_ ...**

"Is it?" asked Simon.

"Not really, using, well, Gramarye is worse."

**'Will,' Gwen said at length, 'is rather an old eleven.'**

**'Ageless, almost,' Robin said. They both sounded solemn and detached, as if they were discussing some far-off stranger.**

The Drews and Bran burst out laughing, "Really?" Bran said, "Did you just figure that out?"

"What's so funny?" Max asked.

"I think it will be explained later," Jane told him.

**'Let up, now,' said Paul unexpectedly. He was the quiet twin, and the family genius, perhaps a real one: he played the flute and thought about little else. 'Anyone coming to tea tomorrow, Will?'**

**'No. Angus Macdonald's gone to Scotland for Christmas, and Mike's staying with his grannie in Southall. I don't mind.'**

**There was a sudden commotion at the back door, and a blast of cold air; much stamping, and noises of loud shivering. Max stuck his head into the room from the passage; his long hair was wet and white-starred. 'Sorry I'm late, Mum, had to walk from the Common. Wow, you should see it out there -like a blizzard.' He looked at the blank row of faces, and grinned. 'Don't you know it's snowing?'**

**Forgetting everything for a moment, Will gave a joyful yell and scrambled with James for the door. 'Real snow? Heavy?'**

"I'd do anything to have not put anyone in danger in the first place." Will said to himself.

"Yeah that snow was dangerous." Will's father said.

**'I'll say,' said Max, scattering drops of water over them as he unwound his scarf. He was the eldest brother, not counting Stephen, who had been in the Navy for years and seldom came home. 'Here.' He opened the door a crack, and the wind whistled through again; outside, Will saw a glittering white fog of fat snowflakes - no trees or bushes visible, nothing but the whirling snow. A chorus of protest came from the kitchen: _'shut that door!'_**

**'There's your ceremony, Will,' said his father. 'Right on time.'**

"Sadly" said Will.

**Much later, when he went to bed, Will opened the bedroom curtain and pressed his nose against the cold windowpane, and he saw the snow tumbling down even thicker than before. Two or three inches already lay on the sill, and he could almost watch the level rising as the wind drove more against the house. He could hear the wind, too, whining round the roof close above him, and in all the chimneys. Will slept in a slant-roofed attic at the top of the house; he had moved into it only a few months before, when Stephen, whose room it had always been, had gone back to his ship after a leave. Until then Will had always shared a room with James - everyone in the family shared with someone else. But my attic ought to be lived in,' his eldest brother had said, knowing how Will loved it.**

"Thanks" said Will warmly.

"Your welcome." Stephen said.

**On a bookcase in one corner of the room now stood a portrait of Lieutenant Stephen Stanton, R.N., looking rather uncomfortable in dress uniform, and beside it a carved wooden box with a dragon on the lid, filled with the letters he sent Will sometimes from unthinkably distant parts of the world. They made a kind of private shrine.**

"Really?" Stephen asked Will.

"Yes, I'd always looked up to you."

**The snow flurried against the window, with a sound like fingers brushing the pane. Again Will heard the wind moaning in the roof, louder than before; it was rising into a real storm. He thought of the tramp, and wondered where he had taken shelter. 'The Walker is abroad ... this night will be bad ...' He picked up his jacket and took the strange iron ornament from it, running his fingers round the circle, up and down the inner cross that quartered it. The surface of the iron was irregular, but though it showed no sign of having been polished it was completely smooth - smooth in a way that reminded him of a certain place in the rough stone floor of the kitchen, where all the roughness had been worn away by generations of feet turning to come round the corner from the door. It was an odd kind of iron: deep, absolute black, with no shine to it but no spot anywhere of discoloration or rust. And once more now it was cold to the touch; so cold this time that Will was startled to find it numbing his fingertips. Hastily he put it down. Then he pulled his belt out of his trousers, slung untidily as usual over the back of a chair, took the circle, and threaded it through like an extra buckle, as Mr. Dawson had told him. The wind sang in the window-frame. Will put the belt back in his trousers and dropped them on the chair.**

**It was then, without warning, that the fear came. **

"Fear?" The family asked. The Drews and Bran had felt the inexplicable feelings before so they didn't comment.

**The first wave caught him as he was crossing the room to his bed. It halted him stock-still in the middle of the room, the howl of the wind outside filling his ears. The snow lashed against the window. Will was suddenly deadly cold, yet tingling all over. He was so frightened that he could not move a finger. In a flash of memory he saw again the lowering sky over the spinney, dark with rooks, the big black birds wheeling and circling overhead. Then that was gone, and he saw only the tramp's terrified face and heard his scream as he ran. For a moment, then, there was only a dreadful darkness in his mind, a sense of looking into a great black pit. Then the high howl of the wind died, and he was released.**

"That sounds awful!" Mary cried. Everyone in the room gave an involuntary shudder.

**He stood shaking, looking wildly round the room. Nothing was wrong. Everything was just as usual. The trouble, he told himself, came from thinking. It would be all right if only he could stop thinking and go to sleep. He pulled off his dressing-gown, climbed into bed, and lay there looking up at the skylight in the slanting roof. It was covered grey with snow.**

**He switched off the small bedside lamp, and the night swallowed the room. There was no hint of light even when his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. Time to sleep. Go on, go to sleep. But although he turned on his side, pulled the blankets up to his chin, and lay there relaxed, contemplating the cheerful fact that it would be his birthday when he woke up, nothing happened. It was no good. Something was wrong.**

"_Dewin_, you are an idiot!" Bran told Will.

"Why do you keep calling him that? _Dewin_?" Mary asked, "it's Welsh, right?"

Bran glanced nervously over at Will who gave no help. "Yes it is Welsh," he told her.

"What does it mean?" Barbra joined in.

"Er, it means wizard, or magician. Someone with magic." Will continued reading before anymore questions were asked.

**Will tossed uneasily. He had never known a feeling like this before. It was growing worse every minute.**

**As if some huge weight were pushing at his mind, threatening, trying to take him over, turn him into something he didn't want to be. That's it, he thought: make me into someone else. But that's stupid. **

"No, it's not." said Jane.

**Who'd want to?**

The Drews and Bran said together, "The Light"

**And make me into what?**

Again the Drews and Bran said together, "Into yourself." Will gave them all an irritated look.

**Something creaked outside the half-open door, and he jumped. Then it creaked again, and he knew what it was: a certain floorboard that often talked to itself at night, with a sound so familiar that usually he never noticed it at all. In spite of himself, he still lay listening. A different kind of creak came from further away, in the other attic, and he twitched again, jerking so that the blanket rubbed against his chin. You're just jumpy, he said to himself; you're remembering this afternoon, but really there isn't much to remember. He tried to think of the tramp as someone unremarkable, just an ordinary man with a dirty overcoat and worn-out boots; but instead all he could see once more was the vicious diving of the rooks. _'The Walker is abroad ..._' Another strange crackling noise came, this time above his head in the ceiling, and the wind whined suddenly loud, and Will sat bolt upright in bed and reached in panic for the lamp.**

**The room was at once a cosy cave of yellow light, and he lay back in shame, feeling stupid. Frightened of the dark, **

"You should be." The Drews and Bran said again.

"No, you should be." Will replied. "They can't touch me. I should be more afraid of what they will do to my friends and family."

"Who?" Barbra asked, confusion written all over her face, as well as the rest of the family.

"You'll find out."

**he thought: how awful. Just like a baby. Stephen would never have been frightened of the dark, up here. Look, there's the bookcase and the table, the two chairs and the window seat; look, there are the six little square-riggers of the mobile hanging from the ceiling, and their shadows sailing over there on the wall. Everything's ordinary. Go to sleep.**

**He switched off the light again, and instantly everything was even worse than before. The fear jumped at him for the third time like a great animal that had been waiting to spring. Will lay terrified, shaking, feeling himself shake, and yet unable to move. He felt he must be going mad.**

Now, everyone just had concern for their "baby boy/brother" or friend written on their faces.

**Outside, the wind moaned, paused, rose into a sudden howl, and there was a noise, a muffled scraping thump, against the skylight in the ceiling of his room. And then in a dreadful furious moment, horror seized him like a nightmare made real; there came a wrenching crash, with the howling of the wind suddenly much louder and closer, and a great blast of cold; and the Feeling came hurtling against him with such force of dread that it flung him cowering away.**

**Will shrieked. He only knew it afterwards; he was far too deep in fear to hear the sound of his own voice. For an appalling pitch-black moment he lay scarcely conscious, lost somewhere out of the world, out in black space. And then there were quick footsteps up the stairs outside his door, and a voice calling in concern, and blessed light warming the room and bringing him back into life again.**

**It was Paul's voice. 'Will? What is it? Are you all right?' **

"Of course he's not!" Mary shrieked her mother side kicking in.

**Slowly Will opened his eyes. He found that he was clenched into the shape of a ball, with his knees drawn up tight against his chin. He saw Paul standing over him, blinking anxiously behind his dark-rimmed spectacles. He nodded, without finding his voice. Then Paul turned his head, and Will followed his looking and saw that the skylight in the roof was hanging open, still swaying with the force of its fall; there was a black square of empty night in the roof, and through it the wind was bringing in a bitter midwinter cold. On the carpet below the skylight lay a heap of snow.**

**Paul peered at the edge of the skylight frame. 'Catch is broken - I suppose the snow was too heavy for it. Must have been pretty old anyway, the metal's all rusted. I'll get some wire and fix it up till tomorrow. Did it wake you? Lord, what a horrible shock. If I woke up like that, you'd find me somewhere under the bed.'**

**Will looked at him in speechless gratitude, and managed a watery smile. Every word in Paul's soothing, deep voice brought him closer back to reality. He sat up in bed and pulled back the covers.**

"I'm glad I could help." Paul said truthfully, everyone in the family was worried about Will.

**'Dad must have some wire with that junk in the other attic,' Paul said. 'But let's get this snow out before it melts. Look, there's more coming in. I bet there aren't many houses where you can watch the snow coming down on the carpet.'**

**He was right: snowflakes were whirling in through the black space in the ceiling, scattering everywhere.**

**Together they gathered what they could into a misshapen snowball on an old magazine, and Will scuttled downstairs to drop it in the bath. Paul wired the skylight back to its catch.**

**'There now,' he said briskly, and though he did not look at Will, for an instant they understood one another very well.**

**'Tell you what, Will, it's freezing up here - why don't you go down to our room and sleep in my bed? And I'll wake you when I come up later - or I might even sleep up here if you can survive Robin's snoring. All right?'**

**'All right,' Will said huskily. 'Thanks.'**

"Thank you for that Paul." Will said, "I don't know if I could have slept up there." Paul just gave him a slight smile in return.

**He picked up his discarded clothes - with the belt and its new ornament - and bundled them under his arm, then paused at the door as they went out, and looked back. There was nothing to see, now, except a dark damp patch on the carpet where the heap of snow had been. But he felt colder than the cold air had made him, and the sick, empty feeling of fear still lay in his chest. If there had been nothing wrong beyond being frightened of the dark, he would not for the world have gone down to take refuge in Paul's room. But as things were, he knew he could not stay alone in the room where he belonged. For when they were clearing up that heap of fallen snow, he had seen something that Paul had not. It was impossible, in a howling snow-storm, for anything living to have made that soft unmistakable thud against the glass that he had heard just before the skylight fell. But buried in the heap of snow, he had found the fresh black wing-feather of a rook.**

**He heard the farmer's voice again: _This night will be bad. And tomorrow will be beyond imagining._**

"Well that's the end of that chapter." Will said, sliding a piece of paper in the book to mark the place. There was a short silence then everyone started talking at once about what they had read. Simon and Jane turned to Bran and started talking in hushed whispers about what each knew about the light and exchanging information. Will sat silently listening to all of the conversations, from the Simon, Jane, and Bran to the family. Barney turned to Will and asked if there was anything to eat so Will gave him an apple.

"Everybody, QUIET!" Barbra shouted, getting everyone's attention. "Will, please explain what is going on."

Will sighed, "This is very complicated, and will take a while to explain. I think it best that you just wait and see what the book says."

"Fine, lets read then." Will passed the book to Barney who opened it to the second chapter.


	3. Midwinter's Day

Dear Reader,

First of all, shout out to my first reader: theoriginalclichedlostsoul. You made me extreemly happy.

Second, when you read this tell me if you like the way I portayed Will. Also, tell me if y'all are BranxJane fans or WillxJane fans, I would like to know. There is a little bit of WillxJane in this chapter, but they are twelve, so I don't give them much more then slight crushes.

My friend just told me that she didn't know who Little Bunny Foo Foo is, isn't that sad? I'm teaching her the song now. Sorry for rambling. Here is Chapter 3.

-Liza

P.S. I do not own The Dark is Rising, I am not Susan Cooper (I'm Liza Cobbler!)

* * *

><p>Chapter 3: Midwinter Day<p>

**Midwinter Day **Barney read.

**He was woken by music. It beckoned him, lilting and insistent; delicate music, played by delicate instruments that he could not identify, with one rippling, bell-like phrase running through it in a gold thread of delight. There was in this music so much of the deepest enchantment of all his dreams and imaginings that he woke smiling in pure happiness at the sound. In the moment of his waking, it began to fade, beckoning as it went, and then as he opened his eyes it was gone. He had only the memory of that one rippling phrase still echoing in his head, and itself fading so fast that he sat up abruptly in bed and reached his arm out to the air, as if he could bring it back.**

"That sounds like the music I heard before I appeared here." Max said.

"That's because it's the same." Will replied.

**The room was very still, and there was no music, and yet Will knew that it had not been a dream.**

**He was in the twins' room still; he could hear Robin's breathing, slow and deep, from the other bed.**

**Cold light glimmered round the edge of the curtains, but no one was stirring anywhere; it was very early.**

**Will pulled on his rumpled clothes from the day before, and slipped out of the room. He crossed the landing to the central window, and looked down.**

**In the first shining moment he saw the whole strange - familiar world, glistening white; the roof of the outbuildings mounded into square towers of snow, and beyond them all the fields and hedges buried, merged into one great flat expanse, unbroken white to the horizon's brim. Will drew in a long, happy breath, silently rejoicing. Then, very faintly, he heard the music again, the same phrase. He swung round vainly searching for it in the air, as if he might see it some where like a flickering light.**

**'Where are you?'**

"Where are you? That's all you can say?" James teased Will.

"That was the same reaction I had." Max said.

"Me too," put in Jane.

"Three" added Barney

"Four" said the thick Welsh voice of Bran.

"Fine" huffed James. "Is it really that good?"

"Yes." chorused Will, Simon, Jane, Barney, Bran, and Max.

**It had gone again. And when he looked back through the window, he saw that his own world had gone with it. In that flash, everything had changed. The snow was there as it had been a moment before, but not piled now on roofs or stretching flat over lawns and fields. There were no roofs, there were no fields.**

"Wait, what?" asked James, "Where did it all go?"

"Go?" Will replied, "It didn't _go_ anywhere."

"But what happened to it all?"

"Was it all there centuries ago?" Will asked.

"No," James replied confused. Barney started reading again.

**There were only trees. Will was looking over a great white forest: a forest of massive trees, sturdy as towers and ancient as rock. They were bare of leaves, clad only in the deep snow that lay untouched along every branch, each smallest twig. They were everywhere. They began so close to the house that he was looking out through the topmost branches of the nearest tree, could have reached out and shaken them if he had dared to open the window. All around him the trees stretched to the flat horizon of the valley. The only break in that white world of branches was away over to the south, where the Thames ran; he could see the bend in the river marked like a single stilled wave in this white ocean of forest, and the shape of it looked as though the river were wider than it should have been.**

The entire family started to grow uneasy, _what is going on? _They all thought.

**Will gazed and gazed, and when at last he stirred he found that he was clutching the smooth iron circle threaded on to his belt. The iron was warm to his touch.**

**He went back into the bedroom.**

**'Robin!' he said loudly. 'Wake up!' But Robin breathed slowly and rhythmically as before, and did not stir. He ran into the bedroom next-door, the familiar small room that he had once shared with James, and shook James roughly by the shoulder. But when the shaking was done, James lay motionless, deeply asleep. **

"No, wonder my shoulder hurt that morning," James said, "I thought I had slept on it wrong."

"Sorry," Will apologized.

**Will went out on to the landing again and took a long breath, and he shouted with all his might: 'Wake up! Wake up, everyone!'**

**He did not now expect any response, and none came. **

"What?" most of the family shouted.

"We woke up as soon as you yelled." Gwin said.

"No," Will said, letting his Old One wisdom come out, "You woke up when you heard me yell, not when I yelled."

"What?" again most of the family said together. Will just motioned for Barney to read on.

**There was a total silence, as deep and timeless as the blanketing snow; the house and everyone in it lay in a sleep that would not be broken.**

**Will went downstairs to pull on his boots, and the old sheepskin jacket that had belonged, before him, to two or three of his brothers in turn. Then he went out of the back door, closing it quietly behind him, and stood looking out through the quick white vapour of his breath.**

**The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the outbuildings nor the old crumbling walls. There lay only a narrow clearing round the house now, hummocked with unbroken snowdrifts, before the trees began, with a narrow path leading away.**

"That sounds magical." Mary said.

"It was." Will told her.

**Will set out down the white tunnel of the path, slowly, stepping high to keep the snow out of his boots. As soon as he moved away from the house, he felt very much alone, and he made himself go on without looking back over his shoulder, because he knew that when he looked, he would find that the house was gone.**

"The house couldn't have just been destroyed." Will's father said, trying to figure out what was going on."

"It wasn't" Will told him.

"Then where was it?" father asked his youngest son, unknowingly thinking about him as an equal, or an elder.

"Tell me," Will asked again. "Was the house built centuries ago?"

"No," Will again motioned to Barney to read, and Barney, who knew to listen and obey Will and Merriman, began to read.

**He accepted everything that came into his mind, without thought or question, as if he were moving through a dream. But a deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming. He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that.**

Will couldn't hold in his laughter at that statement. The family all looked at him funny, he just motioned to Barney to read.

**'Tomorrow will be beyond imagining'. . . Will came out of the white-arched path into the road, paved smooth with snow and edged everywhere by the great trees, and he looked up between the branches and saw a single black rook flap slowly past, high in the early sky.**

_I should have known. _Will thought to himself.

**Turning to the right, he walked up the narrow road that in his own time was called Huntercombe Lane. It was the way that he and James had taken to Dawsons' Farm, the same road that he had trodden almost every day of his life, but it was very different now. Now, it was no more than a track through a forest, great snow-burdened trees enclosing it on both sides. Will moved bright-eyed and watchful through the silence, until, suddenly, he heard a faint noise ahead of him.**

**He stood still. The sound came again, through the muffling trees: a rhythmical, off-key tapping, like hammer striking metal. It came in short irregular bursts, as though someone were hammering nails. As he stood listening, the world around him seemed to brighten a little; the woods seemed less dense, the snow glittered, and when he looked upward, the strip of sky over Huntercombe Lane was a clear blue. He realised that the sun had risen at last out of the sullen bank of grey cloud.**

"That made it so much nicer." Will mused to himself.

**He trudged on towards the sound of hammering, and soon came to a clearing. There was no village of Huntercombe any more, only this. **

"What happened to the village?" Stephen asked.

"I've said this before and I'll say it again," Will said, "Was there a village centuries ago?"

"No, but what does that have to do with anything?" Will, again, only motioned to have the book continued."

**All his senses sprang to life at once, under a shower of unexpected sounds, sights, smells. He saw two or three low stone buildings thick-roofed with snow; he saw blue wood-smoke rising, and smelt it too, and smelt at the same time a voluptuous scent of new-baked bread that brought the water springing in his mouth. He saw that the nearest of the three buildings was three-walled, open to the track, with a yellow fire burning bright inside like a captive sun. Great showers of sparks were spraying out from an anvil where a man was hammering. Beside the anvil stood a tall black horse, a beautiful gleaming animal; Will had never seen a horse so splendidly midnight in colour, with no white markings anywhere.**

"Sounds like a good horse." Robin said.

"_Good_, is defiantly not the right word to describe him," Will said, "Maybe strong, or magnificent. But defiantly not _good_." Jane, Barney, Simon, and Bran nodded, though they may not have met the Rider, they understood that he was of the Dark. They all agreed that the Dark was strong and magnificent, but most certainly not _good_.

**The horse raised its head and looked full at him, pawed the ground, and gave a low whinny. The smith's voice rumbled in protest, and another figure moved out of the shadows behind the horse. Will's breath came faster at the sight of him, and he felt a hollowness in his throat. He did not know why.**

"Really, _dewin_?" Bran asked. "Can you really not recognize the enemy?"

"I didn't know about all of this then!" Will said, frustrated. Will wasn't mad, he didn't get mad at his friends but he did get frustrated.

"What enemy?" Mary asked. Everyone turned to look at her. Will, Bran, and the Drews all exchanged swift glances, Will only said, "The book will explain."

**The man was tall, and wore a dark cloak that fell straight like a robe; his hair, which grew low over his neck, shone with a curious reddish tinge. He patted the horse's neck, murmuring in its ear; then he seemed to sense the cause of its restlessness, and he turned and saw Will. His arms dropped abruptly.**

**He took a step forward and stood there, waiting.**

**The brightness went out of the snow and the sky, and the morning darkened a little, as an extra layer of the distant cloudbank swallowed the sun.**

**Will crossed the road through the snow, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He did not look at the tall cloaked figure facing him. Instead he stared resolutely at the other man, bent again now over the anvil, and realised that he knew him;**

"What?" Paul said, "Who is it?"

"It was John Wayland Smith." Will told him, using the Old One's full name.

"Wayland?" muttered most of the family, but they had figured out now that questions weren't going to be answered.

**it was one of the men from Dawsons' Farm. John Smith, Old George's son.**

**'Morning, John,' he said.**

"Idiot!" Will said, hitting his head with his palm. His family just looked at him funny, what's wrong with greeting John?

**The broad-shouldered man in the leather apron glanced up. He frowned briefly, then nodded in welcome. 'Eh, Will. You're out early.'**

**'It's my birthday,' Will said.**

**'A Midwinter birthday,' said the strange man in the cloak. 'Auspicious, indeed. And you will be eleven years grown.' **

"How did he know that?" asked James.

Will shrugged, "He knows a lot**."**

**It was a statement, not a question. Now Will had to look. Bright blue eyes went with the red-brown hair, and the man spoke with a curious accent that was not of the South-East.**

"Stupid, Stupid, Stupid." Will said hitting himself with each word. His family again looked at him, confused. What did he do this time?

**'That's right,' Will said.**

**A woman came out of one of the nearby cottages, carrying a basket of small loaves of bread, and with them the new- baked smell that had so tantalised Will before. He sniffed, his stomach reminding him that he had eaten no breakfast. The red-haired man took a loaf, wrenched it apart, and held out a half towards him.**

**'Here. You're hungry. Break your birthday fast with me, young Will.' **

"No!" Bran and the Drews shouted.

**He bit into the remaining half of the loaf, and Will heard the crust crackle invitingly. He reached forward, **

"You idiot!" Simon shouted. "Never eat their food!" he glared at Barney.

"I know that now," Will said, "it wasn't your fault." he told Barney and Jane quietly filled Bran in on what they were talking about. Again, the family was only confused, What was wrong with eating the bread?

**but as he did so the smith swung a hot horseshoe out of his fire and clapped it briefly on the hoof clenched between his knees. There was a quick smoky smell of burning, killing the scent of the new bread; then the shoe was back in the fire and the smith peering at the hoof. The black horse stood patient and unmoving, but Will stepped back, dropping his arm.**

"I really need to thank him for that." Will mumbled to himself.

**'No, thank you,' he said.**

**The man shrugged, tearing wolfishly at his bread, and the woman, her face invisible behind the edge of an enveloping shawl, went away again with her basket. John Smith swung the horseshoe out of the fire to sizzle and steam in a bucket of water.**

**'Get on, get on,' said the rider irritably, raising his head. 'The day grows. How much longer?'**

**'Your iron will not be hurried,' said the smith, but he was hammering the shoe in place now with quick, sure strokes. 'Done!' he said at last, trimming the hoof with a knife.**

**The red-haired man led his horse round, tightened the girths, and slid upwards, quick as a jumping cat, into his saddle. Towering there, with the folds of his dark robe flowing over the flanks of the black horse, he looked like a statue carved out of night.**

"Well…" Jane said, thinking about that, "If you want to be technical…"

**But the blue eyes were staring compellingly down at Will.**

**'Come up, boy. I'll take you where you want to go. Riding is the only way, in snow as thick as this.'**

**'No, thank you,' Will said. 'I am out to find the Walker.' He heard his own words with amazement. So that's it, he thought.**

"Who's the Walker?" asked Stephen, voicing everyone's thoughts.

"You'll find out." Will said, though he did whisper an explanation to Bran and the Drews**.**

**'But now the Rider is abroad,' the man said, and all in one quick movement he twitched his horse's head around, bent in the saddle, and made a sweeping grab at Will's arm. Will jerked sideways, but he would have been seized if the smith, standing at the open wall of the forge, had not leapt forward and dragged him out of reach. For so broad a man, he moved with astonishing speed.**

The entire Stanton family let out a breath that they hadn't known that they were holding.

**The midnight stallion reared, and the cloaked rider was almost thrown. He shouted in fury, then recovered himself, and sat looking down in a cold contemplation that was more terrible than rage. 'That was a foolish move, my friend smith,' he said softly. 'We shall not forget.' **

"I hope nothing happens to John," Will's mother fretted.

"Don't worry," Will reassured her, "The Rider has no power over John, especially on that road."

"What's so special about the road?" She asked.

"I think that the book will explain," Will told her.

**Then he swung the stallion round and rode out in the direction from which Will had come, and the hooves of his great horse made only a muffled whisper in the snow.**

**John Smith spat, derisively, and began hanging up his tools.**

**'Thank you,' Will said. 'I hope - ' He stopped.**

**'They can do me no harm,' the smith said. 'I come of the wrong breed for that.**

"See."

**And in this time I belong to the road, as my craft belongs to all who use the road. Their power can work no harm on the road through Hunter's Combe. Remember that, for yourself.'**

"I wish I had." Will mumbled.

**The dream-state flickered, and Will felt his thoughts begin to stir. 'John,' he said. 'I know it's true I must find the Walker, but I don't know why. Will you tell me?'**

The Stanton family all sat forward on their seats hoping that something would be explained.

**The smith turned and looked directly at him for the first time, with a kind of compassion in his weathered face. 'Ah no, **

"Darn!" James said. Bran and the Drews chuckled at the Stantons.

**young Will. Are you so newly awake? That you must learn for yourself. And much more, this your first day.'**

"First day?" Robin asked. "First day of what?" Will didn't answer out loud but he thought: _First day of being an Old One…_

**'First day?' said Will.**

**'Eat,' said the smith. 'There is no danger in it now that you will not be breaking bread with the Rider.**

"Oh," Gwin said. "So there was nothing wrong with the bread?"

Will's eyes showed ageless wisdom when he answered, "No action is Dark or evil, only the intent or persons that you take part with can be." Barney continued before any more questions could be asked.

**You see how quickly you saw the peril of that. Just as you knew there would be greater peril in riding with him. Follow your nose through the day, boy, just follow your nose.' He called to the house,**

**'Martha!'**

**The woman came out again with her basket. This time she drew back her shawl and smiled at Will, and he saw blue eyes like the Rider's but with a softer light in them. **

"Of course," Jane said softly, everyone heard her anyway, "She has the fire of the Light in her soul."

**Gratefully, he munched at the warm crusty bread, which had been split now and spread with honey. Then beyond the clearing there was a new sound of muffled footfalls in the road, and he spun fearfully round.**

**A white mare, without rider or harness, trotted into the clearing towards them: a reverse image of the Rider's midnight-black stallion, tall and splendid and without marking of any kind. Against the dazzle of the snow, glittering now as the sun re-emerged from cloud, there seemed a faint golden glow in its whiteness and in the long mane falling over the arched neck. **

"That sounds like an amazing horse." Mary said.

"She was," Will responded.

**The horse came to stand beside Will, bent its nose briefly and touched his shoulder as if in greeting,**

"I'm lucky to have the right to touch and greet her." Will said to himself. All of the girls were looking jealously at Will.

**then tossed its great white head, blowing a cloud of misty breath into the cold air. Will reached out and laid a reverent hand on its neck.**

**'You come in good time,' John Smith said. 'The fire is hot.'**

"The horse came on it's own?" Will's father asked, astounded. The rest of the family had similar looks on their faces.

Will shrugged, "Yeah, that's normal for her. She's a _very_ smart, _very_ important horse."

**He went back into the forge and pumped once or twice at the bellows-arm, so that the fire roared; then he hooked down a shoe from the shadowed wall beyond and thrust it into the heat. 'Look well,' he said, studying Will's face. 'You've not seen a horse like this ever before. But this will not be the last time.'**

**'She's beautiful,' Will said, and the mare nuzzled again gently at his neck.**

**'Mount,' said the smith.**

The family laughed, "If she is anything like you say, that will be impossible." Max said.

**Will laughed. It was so obviously impossible; his head reached scarcely to the horse's shoulder, and even if there had been a stirrup it would have been far out of reach of his foot.**

**'I am not joking,' said the smith, and indeed he did not look the kind of man who often smiled, let alone made a joke. 'It is your privilege. Take hold of her mane where you can reach it, and you will see.'**

"Yeah right," James said sarcastically. Will just smirked.

**To humour him, Will reached up and wound the fingers of both hands in the long coarse hair of the white horse's mane, low on the neck. In the same instant, he felt giddy; his head hummed like a spinning-top, and behind the sound he heard quite plainly, but very far off, the haunting, bell-like phrase of music that he had heard before waking that morning. He cried out. His arms jerked strangely; the world spun; and the music was gone. His mind was still groping desperately to recover it when he realised that he was closer to the snow-thick branches of the trees than he had been before, sitting high on the white mare's broad back. He looked down at the smith and laughed aloud in delight.**

"You got to ride her?" almost everyone said.

"Yup!" Will replied.

**'When she is shod,' the smith said, 'she will carry you, if you ask.'**

**Will sobered suddenly, thinking. Then something drew his gaze up through the arching trees to the sky, and he saw two black rooks flapping lazily past, high up. **

"Why does the author keep doing that?" Paul asked.

"What?" His twin, Robin asked.

"Mention the rooks, constantly."

"I don't know," Robin turned to Will, "Are the rooks important?"

"Wait and see."

**'No,' he said. 'I think I am supposed to go alone.' He stroked the mare's neck, swung his legs to one side, and slid the long way down, bracing himself for a jolt. But he found that he landed lightly on his toes in the snow. 'Thank you, John. Thank very much. Good-bye.'**

**The smith nodded briefly, then busied himself with the horse, and Will trudged off in some disappointment; he had expected a word of farewell at least. From the edge of the trees, he glanced back. John Smith had one of the mare's hind feet clenched between his knees, and was reaching his gloved hand for his tongs. And what Will saw then made him forget any thought of words or farewells.**

**The smith had done no removing of old horseshoes, or trimming of a shoe-torn foot; this horse had never been shod before. And the shoe that was now being fitted to its foot, like the line of three other shoes he could now see glinting on the far smithy wall, was not a horseshoe at all but another shape, a shape he knew very well. All four of the white mare's shoes were replicas of the cross-quartered circle that he wore on his own belt.**

"What?" Asked Will's father, "That's not very practical."

"Why would you do that?" James asked.

"All things of the Light hold it's sign." Surprisingly, Simon answered.

**Will walked a little way down the road, beneath its narrow roof of blue sky. He put a hand inside his jacket to touch the circle on his belt, and the iron was icy-cold. He was beginning to know what that meant by now. But there was no sign of the Rider; he could not even see any tracks left by the black horse's feet. And he was not thinking of evil encounters. He could feel only that something was drawing him, more and more strongly, towards the place where in his own time Dawsons' Farm would stand.**

"Finally, you get it, _dewin_!" Bran exclaimed.

"I. Didn't. Know. Anything. Yet." Will hissed, getting annoyed.

"Get what?" Barbra asked.

"Where he is." Bran answered.

"It's not 'Where' I was that was the problem." Will said.

"I know, but if I said what actually was the problem then there would be more questions." The family looked at the pair funny, but Will motioned for Barney to continue reading.

**He found the narrow side-lane and turned down it. The track went on a long way, winding in gentle turns. There seemed to be a lot of scrub in this part of the forest; the branching tops of small trees and bushes jutted snow-laden from the mounding drifts, like white antlers from white rounded heads. And then round the next bend, Will saw before him a low square but with rough-daubed clay walls and a roof high with a hat of snow like a thick-iced cake. In the doorway, paused irresolute with one hand on the rickety door, stood the shambling old tramp of the day before. The long grey hair was the same, and so were the clothes and the wizened, crafty face.**

**Will came close to the old man and said, as Farmer Dawson had said the day before: 'So the Walker is abroad.'**

**'Only the one,' said the old man. 'Only me. **

"He's the Walker?" Stephen asked.

"Yup, the one and only." Will told him.

**And what's it to you?' He sniffed, squinting sideways at Will, and rubbed his nose on one greasy sleeve.**

**'I want you to tell me some things,' Will said, more boldly than he felt. 'I want to know why you were hanging around yesterday. Why you were watching. Why the rooks came after you. I want to know,' he said in a sudden honest rush, 'what it means that you are the Walker.'**

"Yes!" James shouted, "That's what we'd all like to know!"

**At the mention of the rooks the old man had flinched closer to the hut, his eyes flickering nervously up at the tree-tops; but now he looked at Will in sharper suspicion than before. 'You can't be the one!' he said.**

**'I can't be what?'**

**'You can't be . . . you ought to know all this. Specially about those hellish birds. Trying to trick me, eh? Trying to trick a poor old man. You're out with the Rider, ain't you? You're his boy, ain't you, eh?'**

"Of course not!" Jane put in, "Will would never work for the Dark!"

**'Of course not,' Will said. 'I don't know what you mean.' He looked at the wretched hut; the lane ended here, but there was scarcely even a proper clearing. The trees stood close all round them, shutting out much of the sun. He said, suddenly desolate, 'Where's the farm?'**

**'There isn't any farm,' said the old tramp impatiently. 'Not yet. You ought to know ...' He sniffed again violently, and mumbled to himself; then his eyes narrowed and he came close to Will, peering into his face and giving of a strong repellent smell of ancient sweat and unwashed skin. 'But you might be the one, you might. If you're carrying the first sign that the Old One gave you. Have you got it there, then? Show us. Show the old Walker the sign.'**

"Sign?" Robin asked, "What sign?"

"It must be the iron circle that Farmer Dawson gave him." His twin answered.

"Oh,"

**Trying hard not to back away in disgust, Will fumbled with the buttons of his jacket. He knew what the sign must be. But as he pushed the sheepskin aside to show the circle looped on his belt, his hand brushed against the smooth iron and felt it burning, biting with icy cold;**

"No!" Bran and the Drews groaned.

**at the same moment he saw the old man leap backwards, cringing, staring not at him but behind him, over his shoulder. Will swung round, and saw the cloaked Rider on his midnight horse.**

**'Well met,' said the Rider softly.**

**The old man squealed like a frightened rabbit and turned and ran, blundering through the snowdrifts into the trees. Will stood where he was, looking at the Rider, his heart thumping so fiercely that it was hard to breathe.**

**'It was unwise to leave the road, Will Stanton,' **

"Yes, unwise indeed." Will agreed with him. "Especially before I knew…"

**said the man in the cloak, and his eyes blazed like blue stars. The black horse edged forward, forward; Will shrank back against the side of the flimsy hut, staring into the eyes, and then with a great effort he made his slow arm pull aside his jacket so that the iron circle on his belt showed clear. He gripped the belt at its side; the coldness of the sign was so intense that he could feel the force from it, like the radiation of a fierce, burning heat. And the Rider paused, and his eyes flickered.**

**'So you have one of them already.' He hunched his shoulders strangely, and the horse tossed its head; both seemed to be gaining strength, to be growing taller. 'One will not help you, not alone, not yet,' said the Rider, and he grew and grew, looming against the white world, while his stallion neighed triumphantly, rearing up, its forefeet lashing the air so that Will could only press himself helpless against the wall. Horse and rider towered over him like a dark cloud, blotting out both snow and sun.**

**And then dimly he heard new sounds, and the rearing black shapes seemed to fall to one side, swept away by a blazing golden light, **

Everyone let out the breath that they had been holding.

"Good." Jane said, "Something from the Light."

**brilliant with fierce patterns of white-hot circles, suns, stars - Will blinked, and saw suddenly that it was the white mare from the smithy, rearing over him in turn. He grabbed frantically at the waving mane, and just as before he found himself jerked up on to the broad back, bent low over the mare's neck, clutching for his life. The great white horse let out a shrieking cry and leapt for the track through the trees, passing the shapeless black cloud that hung motionless in the clearing like smoke; passing everything in a rising gallop, until they came at last to the road, Huntercombe Lane, the road through Hunter's Combe.**

"Finally," Bran said, "You're back on the Way."

**The movement of the great horse changed to a slow-rising, powerful lope, and Will heard the beating of his own heart in his ears as the world flashed by in a white blur. Then all at once greyness came around them, and the sun was blacked out. The wind wrenched into Will's collar and sleeves and boot-tops, ripping at his hair. Great clouds rushed towards them out of the north, closing in, huge grey-black thunder heads; the sky rumbled and growled. One white-misted gap remained,**

"Come on!" James urged.

**with a faint hint of blue behind it still, but it too was closing, closing. The white horse leapt at it desperately. Over his shoulder Will saw swooping towards them a darker shape even than the giant clouds: the Rider, towering immense, his eyes two dreadful points of blue-white fire. Lightning flashed, thunder split the sky, and the mare leapt at the crashing clouds as the last gap closed.**

**And they were safe. **

"Yes!" everyone cheered, relived. Will's mother walked over to him and gave him a hug, "I was so worried." she said.

"Remember," he told her, "This has already happened so, you know that I do live." _Not that I could __**die**_**, **he added in his mind, _just get blown out of all time, no biggie._

"Right," She sighed, "But that doesn't mean that this didn't hurt."

**The sky was blue before and above them; the sun blazing, warming Will's skin. He saw that they had left his Thames Valley behind. Now they were among the curving slopes of the Chiltern Hills, capped with great trees, beech and oak and ash. And running like threads through the snow along the lines of the hills were the hedges that were the marks of ancient fields - very ancient, as Will had always known; more ancient than anything in his world except the hills themselves, and the trees. Then on one white hill, he saw a different mark. The shape was cut through snow and turf into the chalk beneath the soil; it would have been hard to make out if it had not been familiar. But Will knew it. The mark was a circle, quartered by a cross.**

"Again?" James groaned.

"Yes," Will hissed anger shown in his eyes at having the symbol that he stood for being criticized. "You better get used to that symbol because it will appear much more and I will not stand for it being criticized or insulted." he said menacingly. His glare held some of his power and James shrunk away. Will ran his glare over each of the family, "That goes for all of you."

**Then his hands were jerked away from their tight clutch on the thick mane, and the white mare gave a long shrill whinnying cry that was loud in his ears and then strangely died away into a far distance. And Will was falling, falling; yet he knew no shock of a fall, but knew only that he was lying face down on cold snow. He stumbled to his feet, shaking himself. The white horse was gone. The sky was clear, and the sunshine warm on the back of his neck. He stood on a snow-mounded hill, with a copse of tall trees capping it far beyond, and two black birds drifting tiny to and fro above the trees.**

**And before him, standing alone and tall on the white slope, leading to nowhere, were two great carved wooden doors.**

"Leading to nowhere?" Max asked tentatively, still scared from Will's glare.

"Yes." he answered still angry. He got a slap in the back of his head from Jane.

"Don't mind his attitude." She told all of them, "Old Ones are just very touchy when the Light is criticized or insulted." the family was just confused. Were these code words or something?

"You would be too if the Light was your power source and you lived and fought for it." Will grumbled. Bran and the two other Drews started laughing at the two who were fighting.

"I do fight for the Light. Thank you very much," she told him, "We all do."

"I should blast you for your rudeness." He said still angry, though his anger was fading fast.

"Not like you could." She retorted, "You can't touch anything that's not of the Dark."

"It's not worth it. Humans hurt each other anyway, you don't need my help with that."

"Did you just say humans like you aren't one?" Paul asked, the two froze.

"Uh." was all Jane said.

"I think the book will explain," Will finally said. His family was giving him weird looks. _Not human_? They were all thinking. Just then the tension was broken by Barney's stomach growling.

"When did you last eat?" Mary fretted over the guests.

"Lunch?" Simon answered.

"Well, why don't we take a break and have diner before reading the next chapter." Will's father suggested.

"Honey, that's a great idea!" Will's mother said. All of the Stanton girls went off to the kitchen to prepare the food. The Stanton boys sat together to talk about the reading, while the Drews and Bran sat in the corner of the room swapping detailed accounts of each of their adventures. Will started to sit with the Drews and Bran but Stephen caught his arm before he could.

"Will," he said, stiffly. "We'd like to talk to you." and he pulled Will over to the circle of Stanton boys.


	4. The SignSeeker Pt 1: Can He?

Hello Readers!

Sorry for not updating! First my computer got all glitchy and deleated what I had written, then my cousins came into town for a week so I couldn't write. Then I had three days to sleep and pack for a week at summer camp, during which my mother was _supposed_ to fix my laptop. She forgot. If you saw my review that said when I planned on posting it was that week that I was supposed to fix this thing. So I waited while I wasn't allowed to connect it to the internet and my Word wouldn't open. Then I packed an headed back to camp. I just got back and the compter is better, but not totally fixed. Sad, right?

So here is the first part of the reading of Chapter 3. I thought you guys deserved something. I plan on having the rest out by tomorrow night, Lord willing, but I may not have it untill Saturday.

Here is a special shout out to Phoenix Rises! Who commented on this story 3 times! I love reading everybody's reviews and comments. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I realized that I've been spelling Barbara, Barbra. So that is fixed here on out. I may later fix it in the earlier chapters.

-Liza

* * *

><p>Will allowed the Stephan to pull him over to the circle of boys. Stephan sat him down between Robin and James. Will knew what was coming, the inevitable questions. His eleven year old side thought, <em>how do you explain to your human family that you are an immortal guardian of the Light? What if they reject me?<em>

The Stanton boys sat in silence for a few seconds, Will shifted in his seat. Finally…

"Will, what's going on?" Will's father, Roger, asked. Will let out a sigh. His family saw a shadow of wisdom cross his face.

"In the book?" Will started, "The Dark is rising."

"We know, that's the _title_, you dork." James said sarcastically. The tension was getting to him.

"James.." Stephan warned, "This is not the time for sarcasm." The family turned back to Will who looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up.

"Dad, I'm going to wait and let the book explain."

"Will…" Stephan said, obviously not content, "We need to know what's happening to you."

Will thought for a minute then said, "What about this, At the end of each chapter the family is given three questions that I will answer truthfully?" Stephan and Roger exchanged a look, thinking about the offer.

"Okay," Roger answered. "Any boundaries?"

"No topic boundaries." Will thought, "But they have to be specific, If you ask 'What's going on?' then the answer won't be what you want. Also, I promise not to lie, but I may not be able to tell the whole truth."

"Agreed." father and son shook hands, just in time for Barbara to yell that dinner was ready.

After the everyone finished eating they all took their seats to start reading again. Everyone had heard about the deal made and had agreed on three questions for the first two chapters.

"Since it is only fair that we get three questions for the first two chapters," Barbara said, "The family has decided on them." Will groaned, he'd hoped by coming up with the three-question-thing. That his family would be content for at least a chapter. _I guess not_. He thought.

"Our first question is: In the book, where are you?" Max asked.

"I'm _where_ the Huntercombe Village will be." Will answered. "It's just not there yet." The family waited for more of an answer but soon it was apparent that it was all they were going to get.

"Okay, the second question is this: Why can you hear the capital letters in Light and Dark?" Robin asked this time.

"You can hear the capital letters in those because they are names. Names of very powerful opposites." Again the family expected more.

"The third is this: why does Bran always call you '_dewin_'?" Paul asked in his quiet way.

Bran answered this for Will, "_Dewin_ is Welsh for wizard. We always compare our friendship to the one of King Arthur and Merri-Merlin." Will could only stifle his snickers, of course Bran would come up with something like that. The family took that without question. It was the only answer that made sense.

"Are you done now?" Will asked, ready to start reading again.

"Yes," Will grabbed the book and handed it to Simon who read,

**The Sign-Seeker**

"What's that?" Will's mother started to fret, "It's not going to hurt to is it?"

"Who's that." Will corrected, "No, trust me he won't hurt me, at least not on purpose."

"Does that mean that 'he' hurts you on accident?" She continued to fret.

Will thought for a second, "He does something stupid in this chapter and I get hurt but that's it. Simon, will you read?"

**Will thrust his cold hands into his pockets, and stood staring up at the carved panels of the two closed doors towering before him. They told him nothing. He could find no meaning in the zigzag symbols repeated over and over, in endless variation, on every panel. The wood of the doors was like no wood he had ever seen; it was cracked and pitted and yet polished by age, so that you could scarcely tell it was wood at all except by a rounding here and there, where someone had not quite been able to avoid leaving the trace of a knot-hole. If it had not been for signs like those, Will would have taken the doors to be stone.**

**His eyes slid beyond their outline as he looked, and he saw that all around them was a quivering of things, a movement like the shaking of the air over a bonfire or over a paved road baked by a summer sun. Yet there was no difference in heat to explain it here.**

"Magic," Barney said mysteriously, laughing at Will.

**There were no handles on the doors. Will stretched his arms forward, with the palm of each hand flat against the wood, and he pushed. **

"What are you doing?" Max reprimanded him. "There could be something dangerous in there."

"But there isn't." Will told him.

"But there could be," He retorted.

**As the doors swung open beneath his hands, he thought that he caught a phrase of the fleeting bell-like music again; but then it was gone, into the misty gap between memory and imagining. And he was through the doorway, and without a murmur of sound the two huge doors swung shut behind him, and the light and the day and the world changed so that he forgot utterly what they had been.**

**He stood now in a great hall. There was no sunlight here. Indeed there were no real windows in the lofty stone walls, but only a series of thin slits. Between these, on both sides, hung a series of tapestries so strange and beautiful that they seemed to glow in the half-light. Will was dazzled by the brilliant animals and flowers and birds, woven or embroidered there in rich colours like sunlit stained glass.**

**Images leapt at him; he saw a silver unicorn, a field of red roses, a glowing golden sun. Above his head the high vaulted beams of the roof arched up into shadow; other shadows masked the far end of the room. He moved dreamily a few paces forward, his feet making no sound on the sheepskin rugs that covered the stone floor, and he peered ahead. All at once sparks leapt and fire flared in the darkness, lighting up an enormous fireplace in the far wall, and he saw doors and high-backed chairs and a heavy carved table. On either side of the fireplace two figures stood waiting for him: an old lady leaning on a stick, and a tall man.**

"It that Gumerry?" Jane asked Will. "Did he train you?"

"Yeah," Will answered, "Merriman always trains the newly awakened Old Ones."

"Merriman?" James butted in, "As in the guy that gave us this book?"

"Yes, that's the one." his younger brother told him.

**'Welcome, Will,' the old lady said, in a voice that was soft and gentle, yet rang through the vaulted hall like a treble bell. She put out one thin hand towards him, and the firelight glinted on a huge ring that rose round as a marble above her finger. She was very small, fragile as a bird, and though she was upright and alert, Will, looking at her, had an impression of immense age.**

"Will!" Mary reprimanded, "Never talk about a lady's age."

"Sorry," Will apologized. "but remember, I didn't say anything. I only thought it."

**He could not see her face. He paused where he stood, and unconsciously his hand crept to his belt.**

**Then the tall figure on the other side of the fireplace moved, bent, and lighted a long taper at the fire, and coming forward to the table, began putting the taper to a ring of tall candles there. Light from the smoking yellow flame played on his face. Will saw a strong, bony head, with deep-set eyes and an arched nose fierce as a hawk's beak; a sweep of wiry white hair springing back from the high forehead; bristling brows and a jutting chin.**

"What a description!" Bran exclaimed, "I only thought 'tall with white hair'"

"You didn't even think ageless?" Will questioned, because this was the only person that he couldn't read their mind.

"Well, maybe that." Bran admitted.

**And though he did not know why, as he stared at the fierce, secret lines of that face, the world he had inhabited since he was born seemed to whirl and break and come down again in a pattern that was not the same as before.**

"Ain't that the truth," Will muttered to himself, "Everything changed that day." only the Drews and Bran heard him.

**Straightening, the tall man looked at him, across the circle of lighted candles that stood on the table in a frame like the rim of a flat-resting wheel. He smiled slightly, the grim mouth slanting up at its edges, and a sudden fan of lines wrinkling each side of the deep-set eyes. He blew out the burning taper with a quick breath.**

**'Come in, Will Stanton,' **

"How did he know your name?" Stephan asked.

"Three questions," Will reminded him.

**he said, and the deep voice too seemed to leap in Will's memory. 'Come and learn. And bring that candle with you.'**

**Puzzled, Will glanced around him. Close to his right hand, he found a black wrought-iron stand as tall as himself, rising to three points; two of the points were tipped by a five-pointed iron star and the third by a candlestick holding a thick white candle. He lifted out the candle, which was heavy enough to need both hands, and crossed the hall to the two figures waiting at the other end. Blinking through the light, he saw as he approached them that the circle of candles on the table was not a complete circle after all; one holder in the ring was empty. He leaned across the table, gripping the hard smooth sides of the candle, lighted it from one of the others, and fitted it carefully into the empty socket. **

"And the circle is complete." James said like an announcer at a sporting advent. The five that knew of the Light, glanced at each other.

**It was identical with the rest.**

**They were very strange candles, uneven in width but cold and hard as white marble; they burned with a long bright flame and no smoke, and smelled faintly resinous, like pine trees.**

**It was only as he leaned back to stand upright that Will noticed the two crossed arms of iron inside the candlestick ring. Here again, as everywhere, was the sign: the cross within the circle, the quartered sphere.**

James opened his mouth to complain, but at Will's glare, he kept his mouth shut.

**There were other sockets for candles within the frame, he saw now: two along each arm of the cross, and one at the central point where they met. But these were still empty.**

**The old lady relaxed, and sat down in the high-backed chair beside the hearth. 'Very good,' she said comfortably in that same musical voice. 'Thank you, Will.'**

**She smiled, her face folding into a cobweb of wrinkles, and Will grinned whole-heartedly back. He had no idea why he was suddenly so happy; it seemed too natural to be questioned. He sat down on a stool which was clearly waiting for him in front of the fire, between the two chairs.**

**'The doors,' he said, 'the great doors I came through. How do they just stand there on their own?'**

"Wouldn't we all like to know." almost everyone grumbled.

**'The doors?' the lady said.**

**Something in her voice made Will look back over his shoulder at the far wall from which he had just come: the wall with the two high doors, and the holder from which he had taken the candle. He stared; there was something wrong. The great wooden doors had vanished. The grey wall stretched blank, its massive square stones quite featureless except for one round golden shield, alone, hanging high up and glinting dully in the light from the fire.**

**The tall man laughed softly. 'Nothing is what it seems, boy. Expect nothing and fear nothing, here or anywhere. There's your first lesson. And here's your first exercise. **

"How can you expect nothing and fear nothing?" Gwen questioned. No one answered her. Will, because he was refusing to answer questions, everyone else, because they didn't know.

**We have before us Will Stanton – tell us what has been happening to him, this last day or two.'**

**Will looked into the urgent flames, warm and welcome on his face in the chill room. It took much effort to wrench his mind back to the moment when he and James had left home for Dawsons' Farm to collect hay - hay! - the previous afternoon. He thought, bemused, about everything that stood between that moment and his present self. After a while he said: 'The sign. **

"That's what you talked about?" James wined.

"Yes, I knew that this was the topic at hand." Will answered.

**The circle with the cross. Yesterday Mr Dawson gave me the sign. Then the Walker came after me, or tried to, and afterwards they – whoever they are - they tried to get me.'**

"No one touches my son/little brother!" the family called.

**He swallowed, cold at the memory of his night's fear. 'To get the sign. They want it, that's what everything is about. That's what today is about too, even though it's so much more complicated because now isn't now, it's some other time,**

"You time traveled?" Robin asked.

"Yes," Will replied. "That is why Bran and I kept saying that _where_ I was wasn't a problem. Nor _where_ the house or village was either."

**I don't know when. With everything like a dream, but real ... They're still after it. I don't know who they are, except for the Rider and the Walker. I don't know you either, only I know you are against them. You and Mr Dawson and John Wayland Smith.'**

**He stopped.**

**'Go on,' said the deep voice.**

**'Wayland?' Will said, perplexed. 'That's an odd name. That's not part of John's name. What made me say that?'**

"'Minds hold more than they know.'" Will quoted.

**'Minds hold more than they know,'**

The Drews and Bran let out a little laugh. "Of course you two say the same thing." Simon laughed.

**the tall man said. 'Particularly yours. And what else have you to say?'**

**'I don't know,' Will said. He looked down and ran a finger along the edge of his stool; it was carved in gentle regular waves, like a peaceful sea. 'Well, yes I do. Two things. One is that there's something funny about the Walker. I don't really think he's one of them, because he was scared stiff of the Rider when he saw him, and ran away.'**

**'And the other thing?' the big man said.**

**Somewhere in the shadows of the great room a clock struck, with a deep note like a muffled bell: a single note, a half-hour.**

"What time was it?" Max asked. Will just shrugged his shoulders. Simon began to read again.

**'The Rider,' Will said. 'When the Rider saw the sign, he said: "So you have one of them already." He didn't know I had it. But he had come after me. Chasing me. Why?'**

"Yeah, why?" mumbled most of the family**.**

**'Yes,' said the old lady. She was looking at him rather sadly. 'He was chasing you. I'm afraid the guess that is in your mind is right, Will. It isn't the sign they want most of all. It's you.'**

"No one will touch my baby boy!" Will mother said.

"Mum," Will calmed, "It's okay. I'm fine."

**The big man stood up, and crossed behind Will so that he stood with one hand on the back of the old lady's chair and the other in the pocket of the dark, high-necked jacket he wore. 'Look at me, Will,' he said. Light from the burning ring of candles on the table glinted on his springing white hair, and put his strange, shadowed eyes into even deeper shadows, pools of darkness in the bony face. 'My name is Merriman Lyon,' he said. 'I greet you, Will Stanton. We have been waiting for you for a long time.'**

Will let out a laugh, "This is kind of funny now that I understand everything."

**'I know you,' Will said. 'I mean ... you look ... I felt ... don't I know you?'**

"Really?" James mocked, "'But you….I felt…don't I know you'"

**'In a sense,' Merriman said. 'You and I are, shall we say, similar. We were born with the same gift, and for the same high purpose. **

"High purpose?" the family muttered.

**And you are in this place at this moment, Will, to begin to understand what that purpose is. But first you must be taught about the gift.'**

**Everything seemed to be running too far, too fast. 'I don't understand,' Will said, looking at the strong, intent face in alarm. 'I haven't any gift, really I haven't. I mean there's nothing special about me.' **

"Yes there is!" his family shouted.

"I meant supernatural." Will said rolling his eyes.

"Yes there is!" the Drews and Bran mocked.

**He looked from one to the other of them, figures alternately lit and shadowed by the dancing flames of candles and fire, and he began to feel a rising fear, a sense of being trapped. He said, 'It's just the things that have been happening to me, that's all.'**

**'Think back, and remember some of those things,' the old lady said. 'Today is your birthday. Midwinter Day, your eleventh Midwinter's Day. Think back to yesterday, your tenth Midwinter's Eve, before you first saw the sign. Was there nothing special at all, then? Nothing new?'**

"Well," Paul said thinking aloud, "The animals were scared,"

**Will thought. 'The animals were scared of me,' he said reluctantly. 'And the birds perhaps. But it didn't seem to mean anything at the time.'**

**'And if you had a radio or a television set switched on in the house,' Merriman said, 'it behaved oddly whenever you went near it.'**

"How did he know that?" Barbara asked. When no one answered her she huffed and sat back in her seat.

**Will stared at him. 'The radio did keep making noises. How did you know that? I thought it was sunspots or something.'**

**Merriman smiled. 'In a way. In a way.' Then he was sombre again. 'Listen now. The gift I speak of, it is a power, that I will show you. It is the power of the Old Ones, **

**who are as old as this land and older even than that. You were born to inherit it, Will, when you came to the end of your tenth year.**

The family, ready for an explanation sat and listened to this in silence.

**On the night before your birthday, it was beginning to wake, and now on the day of your birth it is free, flowering, fully grown. But it is still confused and unchannelled because you are not in proper control of it yet. You must be trained to handle it, before it can fall into its true pattern and accomplish the quest for which you are here. Don't look so prickly, boy. Stand up. I'll show you what it can do.'**

**Will stood up, and the old lady smiled encouragingly at him. He said to her suddenly, 'Who are you?'**

"Will!" Mary reprimanded him, "Where are you manners?"

"Sorry," Will pacified her.

**'The lady - ' Merriman began.**

**'The lady is very old,' she said in her clear young voice, 'and has in her time had many, many names. Perhaps it would be best for now, Will, if you were to go on thinking of me as - the old lady.'**

**'Yes, ma'am,' Will said, and at the sound of her voice his happiness came flooding back, the rising alarm dropped away, and he stood up erect and eager, peering into the shadow behind her chair where Merriman had moved a few paces back. He could see the glint of white hair on the tall figure, but no more.**

**Merriman's deep voice came out of the shadow. 'Stand still. Look at whatever you like, but not hard, concentrate on nothing. Let your mind wander, pretend you are in a boring class at school.'**

"_A _boring class at school?" James tried to break the tension, "_all_ classes at school are boring!"

**Will laughed, and stood there relaxed, tilting his head back. He squinted up, idly trying to distinguish between the dark criss-crossing beams in the high roof and the black lines that were their shadows.**

**Merriman said casually, 'I am putting a picture into your mind. Tell me what you see.'**

**The image formed itself in Will's mind as naturally as if he had decided to paint an imaginary landscape and were making up the look of it before putting it on paper. **

"You can receive mental images?" Max asked, surprised. Will just nodded and motioned for Simon to read.

**He said, describing the details as they came to him: 'There's a grassy hillside, over the sea, like a sort of gentle cliff. **

"Is that.." Jane wondered aloud.

**Lots of blue sky, and the sea a darker blue underneath. A long way down, right down there where the sea meets the land, there's a strip of sand, lovely glowing golden sand. **

"I think it is…" Barney said.

**And inland from the grassy headland - you can't really see it from here except out of the corner of your eye - hills, misty hills. They're a sort of soft purple, and their edges dissolve into a blue mist, **

"It must be!" Jane said happily.

"Be what?" Bran asked. Jane just motioned for her brother to read. He knew what it was as well. The family just watched in silence and you could see the amusement in Will's eyes.

**the way the colours in a painting dissolve into one another if you keep it wet.**

**And' - he came out of his half-trance of seeing and looked hard at Merriman, peering into the shadow with inquisitive interest - 'and it's a sad picture. **

"Sad?" Barney wondered. "Why would it make him sad?"

**You miss it, you're homesick for wherever it is. **

"Oh," Barney answered himself, "That makes sense."

**Where is it?'**

"It is Trewissick," Jane said. "isn't it Will?"

"Yes." Will smiled. "He showed me an image of Trewissick"

**'Enough,' Merriman said hastily, but he sounded pleased. 'You do well. Now it is your turn. Give me a picture, Will. Just choose some ordinary scene, anything, and think of the way it looks, as if you were standing looking at it.'**

"You can send a picture to other people too?" Paul asked. Will nodded again, but didn't volunteer any information.

**Will thought of the first image that came into his head. It was one which he realised now had been worrying away at the back of his thoughts all this while: the picture of the two great doors, isolated on the snowy hillside, with all their intricate carving, and the strange blue at their edges.**

**Merriman said at once: 'Not the doors. Nothing so close. Somewhere from your life before this winter came.'**

Everyone looked at Will, all wondering the same thing, _What is he going to choose?_

**For a second Will stared at him disconcerted; then he swallowed hard, closed his eyes and thought of the jeweller's shop his father ran in the little town of Eton.**

"You thought of that?" the family laughed.

**Merriman said, slowly, 'The door-handle is of the lever kind, like a round bar, to be pushed downward perhaps ten degrees on opening. **

The entire family's mouths dropped open, how detailed was this going to be?

**A small hanging-bell rings as the door moves. You step down a few inches to reach the floor, and the jolt of the drop is startling without being dangerous.**

Their mouths opened even more.

**There are glass showcases all-round the walls, and beneath the glass counter - of course, this must be your father's shop. With some beautiful things inside it. A grandfather clock, very old, in the back corner, with a painted face and a deep, slow tick. A turquoise necklet in the central showcase with a setting of silver serpents: Zuni work, I think, a very long way from home. **

Mouths opened another bit.

**An emerald pendant like a great green tear. A small enchanting model of a Crusader castle, in gold - perhaps a salt-cellar - that you have loved, I think, since you were a small boy. And that man behind the counter, short and content and gentle, must be your father, Roger Stanton. Interesting to see him clearly at last, free of the mist ... **

"Mist?" Roger asked. No one answered him.

**He has a jeweller's glass in his eye, and he is looking at a ring: an old gold ring with nine tiny stones set in three rows, three diamond chips in the centre and three rubies at either side, and some curious runic lines edging those that I think I must look at more closely one day soon - '**

"He even got the ring!" James said. The entire family had their mouths on the floor.

"Close your mouths," Bran said, "You'll catch flies!" The family slowly closed their mouths.

**'You even got the ring!' Will said, fascinated. 'That's mother's ring, Dad was looking at it last time I was in the shop. She thought one of the stones was loose, but he said it was an optical illusion ... However do you do it?'**

**'Do what?' There was an ominous softness in the deep voice.**

**'Well - that. Put a picture in my head. And then see the one I had there myself. Telepathy, isn't it called? It's tremendous.' But an uneasiness was beginning in his mind.**

**'Very well,' Merriman said patiently. 'I will show you in another way. There is a circle of candle flames beside you there on the table, Will Stanton. Now - do you know of any possible way of putting out one of those flames, other than blowing it out or quenching it with water or snuffer or hand?'**

"There isn't any." Stephan said, he started to worry where this was going, _He couldn't…could he_? He wondered silently.

**'No.'**

**'No. There is none. But now, I tell you that you, because you are who you are, can do that simply by wishing it. **

"Yeah right," James said. Will just looked at him. James shifted uneasily_ he couldn't…could he?_

**For the gift that you have, this is a very small task indeed. **

"Small!" the twin shouted in unison. Will shifted his gaze at him, they thought of everything that had happened. _He couldn't…could he?_

**If in your mind you choose one of those flames and think of it without even looking, think of it and tell it to go out, then that flame will go out.**

"That's not possible!" Max exclaimed. He was starting to get freaked out_. He couldn't…could he?_

**And is that a possible thing for any normal boy to do?'**

_No it's not, _all of his sisters thought_. He couldn't…could he?_

**'No,' Will said unhappily.**

**'Do it,' Merriman said. 'Now.'**

"How?" his parents said. They saw the look on Will's face_. He couldn't…could he?_

**There was a sudden thick silence in the room, like velvet. Will could feel them both watching him. He thought desperately: I'll get out of it, I'll think of a flame, but it won't be one of those; it'll be something much bigger, something that couldn't be put out except by some tremendous impossible magic even Merriman doesn't know . . . He looked across the room at the light and shadow dancing side by side across the rich tapestries on the stone walls, and he thought hard, in furious concentration, of the image of the blazing log fire in the huge fireplace behind him. **

The family sat forward in anticipation.

**He felt the warmth of it on the back of his neck, and thought of the glowing orange heart of the big pile of logs and the leaping yellow tongues of flame. 'Go out, fire', he said to it in his mind, feeling suddenly safe and free from the dangers of power, because of course no fire as big as that could possibly go out without a real reason. 'Stop burning, fire. Go out'.**

**And the fire went out.**

The entire family gasped, _He can?_


	5. The SignSeeker Pt 2: Rejection

Dear Readers,

I doubt that any of you are old readers because this is such a late update. My excuse is that my best friend's fiancé, Procrastination, was cheating her with me. Pathetic, I know, but true. So, if you hate me, please don't tell me. I will continue writing this at a slow pace because I go to an extremely difficult school and I work hard for my grades. This is not on my important list, this is on my fun list. I'm sorry. If someone wants to adopt this, they can.

This chapter is 16 pages on Word and has a whole lot more written by me then some of the earlier chapters. There is both WillxJane and BranxJane in this chapter. See if you can find them.

Review if you want me to update any faster. Review if you have any critism. Review if you have any ideas you want in it. Review if you have already read _Son of Neptune_. I have!

Thank you for reading, thank you for not hating me,

-Liza

* * *

><p>The family was in shock from the revelation that Will had supernatural powers. Simon started to read again.<p>

**All at once the room was chill - and darker. The ring of candle flames on the table burned on, in a small cold pool of their own light only. Will spun round, staring in consternation at the hearth; there was no hint of smoke, or water, or of any way in which the fire could possibly have died. But dead it was, cold and black, without a spark. He moved towards it slowly. Merriman and the old lady said no word, and did not stir. Will bent and touched the blackened logs in the hearth, and they were cold as stone - yet furred with a layer of new ash that fell away under his fingers into a white dust.**

The family shivered at such unnatural things. The Drews and Bran didn't care, they _had _seen weirder.

**He stood up, rubbing his hand slowly up and down his trouser-leg, and looked helplessly at Merriman. The man's deep eyes burned like black candle flames, but there was compassion in them, and as Will glanced nervously across at the old lady, he saw a kind of tenderness in her face too. She said gently: 'It's a little cold, Will.'**

**For a timeless interval that was no more than the flicker of a nerve, Will felt a screaming flash of panic, a memory of the fear he had felt in the dark nightmare of the snowstorm; then it was gone, and in the peace of its vanishing he felt somehow stronger, taller, more relaxed. He knew that in some way he had accepted the power, whatever it was, that he had been resisting, and he knew what he must do. **

Bran laughed softly.

"What do you find funny _now_?" Will asked.

"Well," Bran said to the ones that knew of the Light. "It's just really funny to see _Will_, and _Old One _be so unsure of his power. I mean, you always are so solemn and sure." The others had to laugh, it was kind of funny. The family wondered what an Old One was and what that had to do with anything.

**Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and stood straight and firm there in the great hall. He smiled at the old lady; then looked past her, at nothing, and concentrated on the image of the fire. 'Come back, fire', he said in his mind. 'Burn again'. And the light was dancing over the tapestried walls once more, and the warmth of the flames was back on his neck, and the fire burned.**

**'Thank you,' the old lady said.**

**'Well done,' said Merriman softly, and Will knew that he was not speaking merely of the extinguishing and relighting of a fire.**

"Yes," James said in a sarcastic voice. "Because, he knows everything!"

The Drews, Will, and Bran shared looks, trying not to laugh. "Um," Simon said, "he kind of does."

"Oh," James said, put out. "Wait, how?" Everyone ignored him and Simon started reading again.

**'It is a burden,' Merriman said. 'Make no mistake about that. Any great gift of power or talent is a burden, and this more than any, and you will often long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law. And it is just as well, young Will, that you have only a glimmering of an idea of the gift that is in you, for until the first ordeals of learning are over, you will be in great danger. **

"What?" Will mother gasped. "Danger? What danger?"

"It's nothing, mum," Will tried to pacify. "Just the usual."

"_Usual?"_

**And the less you know of the meaning of your power, the better able it will be to protect you as it has done for the last ten years.'**

**He gazed at the fire for a moment, frowning. 'I will tell you only this: that you are one of the Old Ones, the first to have been born for five hundred years, and the last. **

"So what is an Old One?" Max asked.

"I think the book will explain," Will told him. "Or that can be one of your three questions for the end of this chapter."

**And like all such, you are bound by nature to devote yourself to the long conflict between the Light and the Dark. **

"That's awful!" Gwen exclaimed. "Do you have _any_ say in the matter?"

Will just looked at her, "I don't need a say." he told them. "I understand that the High Magic requires me to fulfill my place in the destiny of the world." His family looked at him with a mixture of pity and wonder.

**Your birth, Will, completed a circle that has been growing for four thousand years in every oldest part of this land: the circle of the Old Ones. Now that you have come into your power, your task is to make that circle indestructible. It is your quest to find and to guard the six great Signs of the Light, made over the centuries by the Old Ones, to be joined in power only when the circle is complete. The first Sign hangs on your belt already, but to find the rest will not be easy. You are the Sign-seeker, Will Stanton. **

"Wait," James interrupted. "_You_ are the Sign-Seeker?"

"Yes," Will replied.

"But _you _said _he _does something stupid and _you _get hurt."

"Yes."

"Oh, okay. Just checking."

**That is your destiny, your first quest. If you can accomplish that, you will have brought to life one of the three great forces that the Old Ones must turn soon towards vanquishing the powers of the Dark, which are reaching out now steadily and stealthily over all this world.'**

Everyone in the room (excluding Will) shuddered with a mutual fear. Some didn't even know why they were so scared.

**The rhythms of his voice, which had been rising and falling in an increasingly formal pattern, changed subtly into a kind of chanted battle cry; a call, Will thought suddenly, with a chill tightening his skin, to things beyond the great hall and beyond the time of the calling. 'For the Dark, the Dark is rising. The Walker is abroad, the Rider is riding; they have woken, the Dark is rising. **

The family knew that this was bad. All of the Stantons looked to Will in fear, no one could wrap their minds around the magic of it all.

**And the last of the Circle is come to claim his own, **

"Is that you, Will?" Stephan asked.

"Yes," Will answered. Simon started reading again when it became obvious that Will wasn't going to offer anymore information.

**and the circles must now all be joined. The white horse must go to the Hunter, and the river take the valley; there must be fire on the mountain, fire under the stone, fire over the sea. Fire to burn away the Dark, for the Dark, the Dark is rising!'**

**He stood there tall as a tree in the shadowed room, his deep voice ringing out in an echo, and Will could not take his eyes from him. 'The Dark is rising'. That was exactly what he had felt last night. That was what he was beginning to feel again now, a shadowy awareness of evil pricking at his fingertips and the top of his spine, but for the life of him he could not utter a word. Merriman said, in a singsong tone that came strangely from his awesome figure, as if he were a child reciting:**

All of the Drews, Bran, and Will chanted in that sing-song voice together.

**_When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;_**

**_Three from the circle, three from the track;_**

**_Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;_**

**_Five will return, and one go alone._**

**Then he swept forward out of the shadow**

The Drews and Bran looked at Will. Will knew that they were continuing that chant under their breaths. He also knew that they wanted to ask him why he hadn't heard the whole thing, but he didn't tell them.

**, past the old lady, still and bright-eyed in her high-backed chair; with one hand he raised one of the thick white candles out of the burning ring, and with the other swung Will towards the towering side wall.**

**'Look well, for each moment, Will,' he said. 'The Old Ones will show something of themselves, and remind the deepest part of you. For one moment, look at each.' And with Will beside him he strode long-legged round the hall, holding the candle aloft again and again beside each of the hanging tapestries on the walls. Each time, as if he had commanded it, one bright image shone for an instant out of each glowing embroidered square, as bright and deep as a sunlit picture seen through a window-frame. And Will saw.**

**He saw a may tree white with blossom, growing from the thatched roof of a house. He saw four great grey standing stones on a green headland over the sea. **

The Drews took a moment to grin at each other. Will just laughed.

**He saw the empty-eyed grinning white skull of a horse, with a single stubby broken horn in the bony forehead and red ribbons wreathing the long jaws.**

**He saw lightning striking a huge beech tree and, out of the flash, a great fire burning on a bare hillside against a black sky.**

Bran threw Will a sad glance. Will knew that he must have been thinking about Cafall.

**He saw the face of a boy not much older than himself, staring curiously into his own: a dark face beneath light-streaked dark hair, with strange cat-like eyes, the pupils light-bordered but almost yellow within.**

Bran looked at Will, "The only person with those eyes is me, but that can't be me…"

Will just shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe the book will tell."

** He saw a broad river in flood and beside it a wizened old man perched on an enormous horse. As Merriman whirled him inexorably from one picture to the next, he saw suddenly with a flash of terror the brightest image of all: a masked man with a human face, the head of a stag, the eyes of an owl, the ears of a wolf, and the body of a horse. **

"That sounds familiar," Max muttered. "Where have I heard of something like that?" He mused to himself. Will knew what it was and kept himself from smirking by reminding himself that he hadn't known either.

**The figure leapt, tugging at some lost memory deep within his mind.**

**'Remember them,' Merriman said. 'They will be a strength.' Will nodded, then stiffened. All at once he heard noises growing outside the hall, and knew with a dreadful shock of certainty why it was that he had felt such uneasiness a short time before. **

The Drews and Bran groaned, _Darn it! The Dark is there…_

**While the old lady sat motionless in her chair, and he and Merriman stood again beside the hearth, the great hall was filled suddenly with a hideous mixture of moaning and mumbling and strident wailing, like the caged voices of an evil zoo. It was a sound more purely nasty than any he had ever heard.**

Everyone shivered as they tried to imagine pure evil and/or thought about their memories of the Dark.

**The hair prickled at the back of Will's neck, and then suddenly there was silence. A log fell, rustling, in the fire. Will heard the blood beating in his veins. And into the silence a new sound came from somewhere outside, beyond the far wall: the heart-broken, beseeching whine of a forsaken dog, calling in panic for help and friendliness. It sounded exactly as Raq and Ci, their own dogs, had sounded when they were puppies crying for comfort in the dark;**

Will, the Drews, and Bran let out a half-laugh, _oh, the irony._

** Will felt himself dissolve into sympathy, and he turned instinctively towards the sound.**

"No!" everyone shouted. Even the family knew that this wasn't just a scared dog. Will raised an eyebrow.

"You do know that you're talking to a book, right?" he asked, smugly. Everyone just grumbled and Simon started reading again.

**'Oh, where is it? Poor thing - '**

**As he looked at the blank stone of the far wall, he saw a door take shape in it. It was not a door like the huge vanished pair by which he had entered, but far smaller; an odd, pinched little door looking totally out of place. But he knew he could open it to help the imploring dog. The animal whined again in more acute misery than before; louder, more pleading, in a desperate half-howl. Will swung impulsively forward to run to the door; **

Everyone drew in a breath.

**then was frozen in mid-step by Merriman's voice. **

The breath was released.

**It was soft, but cold as winter stone. 'Wait. If you saw the shape of the poor sad dog, you would be greatly surprised. And it would be the last thing you would ever see.'**

**Incredulous, Will stood and waited. The whining died away, in a last long howl. There was silence for a moment. Then all at once he heard his mother's voice from behind the door.**

"What?" Alice asked. "But I wasn't there."

"Exactly," Jane told her softly. "But Will doesn't know that."

Will's mother only paled more. The family waited to find out what would happen in a thick silence.

**'Will? Wiii-iill ... Come and help me, Will!' It was unmistakably her voice, but filled with an unfamiliar emotion: there was in it a note of half-controlled panic that horrified him. It came again. 'Will? I need you . . . where are you, Will? Oh, please, Will, come and help me - ' And then an unhappy break at the end, like a sob. Will could not bear it. He lurched forward and ran towards the door. Merriman's voice came after him like a whiplash. 'Stop!'**

"You listen to him right?" Bran and Jane said in unison, then realizing what they had done, blushed.

Will, barely containing his laughter, replied. "I didn't know how important he was at he time, I had just turned eleven and didn't hold the knowledge that I have now, and I heard my mother cry for help. Do you think that I'm going to just sit there?" The two just rolled there eyes, _he should have known better_, they thought, _not that I would have done anything differently**…**_

**'But I must go, can't you hear her!' Will shouted angrily. 'They've got my mother: I've got to help - '**

"Thank-you," his mother whispered.

**'Don't open that door!' There was a hint of desperation in the deep voice that told Will, through instinct, that in the last resort Merriman was powerless to stop him.**

"Really?" Bran asked in surprise. "But as a Lor-"

"Bran!" Will hissed, stopping him from saying "Lord of the Light". Will answered the unspoken question "He holds power over me but he can't stop me from doing anything. He must enforce the rules and consequences."

**'That is not your mother, Will,' the old lady said clearly.**

**'Please, Will!' his mother's voice begged.**

**'I'm coming!' Will reached out to the door's heavy latch, but in his haste he stumbled, and knocked against the great head-high candlestick so that his arm was jarred against his side.**

The family sat forward, worried for their little boy/brother.

** There was a sudden searing pain in his forearm, and he cried out and dropped to the floor, staring at the inside of his wrist where the sign of the quartered circle was burned agonisingly red into his skin. **

The family looked at Will as if to make sure that he was okay.

"Will," Barbara started. Will cut her off. He held out his arm for all of them to see the sign branded onto his arm.

**Once more the iron symbol on his belt had caught him with its ferocious bite of cold; it burned this time with a cold like white heat, in a furious flaring warning against the presence of evil - the presence that Will had felt but forgotten.**

**Merriman and the old lady still had not moved. Will stumbled to his feet and listened, while outside the door his mother's voice wept, then grew angry, and threatened; then softened again and coaxed and cajoled; then finally ceased, dying away in a sob that tore at him even though his mind and senses told him it was not real.**

**And the door faded with it, melting like mist, until the grey stone wall was solid and unbroken as before.**

The family tried to imagine such magic and power. No one could believe that their little brother knew of all of the magic, and that he was part of it.

**Outside, the dreadful inhuman chorus of moaning and wailing began again.**

**The old lady rose to her feet then and came across the hall, her long green dress rustling gently at every step. She took Will's hurt forearm in both her hands and put her cool right palm over it. Then she released him. The pain in Will's arm was gone, and where the red burn had been he saw now the shiny, hairless skin that grows in when a burn has been long healed.**

"That's what you did, isn't it?" Robin asked. "When you said that the Sign-Seeker did something stupid and you got hurt. You were talking about this."

"Yes, that is what I did to hurt myself," Will told them. "But I also do something that is worse."

** But the shape of the scar was clear, and he knew he would bear it to the end of his life; it was like a brand. The nightmare sounds beyond the wall rose and fell in uneven waves.**

**'I'm sorry,' Will said miserably.**

**'We are besieged, as you see,' Merriman said, coming forward to join them. 'They hope to gain a hold over you while you are not yet grown into your full power. And this is only the beginning of the peril, Will.**

"Only the beginning?" most of the family muttered.

"Oh seriously," Barney said. "You can't have thought that this was the worst?" the family just looked at him; that was exactly what they had thought. "Oh," he said.

**Through all this midwinter season their power will be waxing very strong, with the Old Magic able to keep it at a distance only on Christmas Eve. And even past Christmas it will grow, not losing its high force until the Twelfth Day, the Twelfth Night - which once was Christmas Day, and once before that, long ago, was the high winter festival of our old year.'**

**'What will happen?' Will said.**

"Wow," James said sarcastically, trying to break the mounting tension. "That was _so_ creative."

**'We must think only of the things that we must do,' the old lady said. 'And the first is to free you from the circle of dark power that is drawn now round this room.'**

**Merriman said, listening intently, 'Be on your guard. Against anything. They have failed with one emotion; they will try to trap you through another next.'**

The family couldn't imagine what it would be like to have you emotions attacked. The Drews, Will, and Bran all had the same far away looks in their eyes. They were all thinking on memories of those attacks. The family saw these looks and couldn't believe it._ Did all of these _kids _have to go through this? _

Barbara, getting impatient, cleared her throat, getting Simon's attention.

**'But it must not be fear,' she said. 'Remember that, Will. You will be frightened, often, but never fear them. The powers of the Dark can do many things, but they cannot destroy. They cannot kill those of the Light. Not unless they gain a final dominion over the whole earth. And it is the task of the Old Ones - your task and ours - to prevent that. So do not let them put you into fear or despair.'**

"See," Will told his family. "They can't touch me, or humans. They can only play on emotions and make humans hurt each other." Bran looked at his shoes, thinking about the time he had blamed Will for Cafall, his dog's death. His father had said had said something similar.

"'Only the creatures of the earth take from one another.'" Bran started to quote quietly, because every word that his father had spoken stayed, word-for-word, in his mind. "'All creatures, but men more then any. Life they take, and liberty, and all that another man may have-sometimes through greed, sometimes through stupidity, but never any volition but their own. Beware your own race, they are the only ones who will ever harm you, in the end.'" **(1)**

The family didn't say anything, even though Bran had said that quietly they had heard every word.

**She went on, saying more, but her voice was drowned like a rock submerged in a high-tide wave, as the horrible chorus that whined and keened outside the walls rose louder, louder, faster and angrier, into a cacophony of screeches and unearthly laughter, shrieks of terror and cackles of mirth, howlings and roars. As Will listened, his skin crept and grew damp.**

**As if in a dream he heard Merriman's deep voice ring out through the dreadful noise, calling him. He could not have moved if the old lady had not taken his hand, drawing him across the room, back towards the table and the hearth, the only cave of light in the dark hall. Merriman spoke close to his ear, swift and urgent, 'Stand by the circle, the circle of light. Stand with your back to the table, and take our hands. It is a joining they cannot break.'**

"You broke it didn't you?" Jane asked. The family looked at them in fear. Will just rolled his eyes.

"Already happened,"

**Will stood there, his arms spread wide, as out of sight beside him each of them took one of his hands.**

**The light of the fire in the hearth died, and he became aware that behind him the flames of the candle-circle on the table had grown tall, gigantic, so high that when he tilted back his head he could see them rising far over him in a white pillar of light. There was no heat from this great tree of flame, and though it glowed with great brilliance it cast no light beyond the table. Will could not see the rest of the hall, not the walls nor the pictures nor any door. He could see nothing but blackness, the vast black emptiness of the awful looming night.**

Everyone shuddered, sans Will, at the thought of pure Dark.

**This was the Dark, rising, rising to swallow Will Stanton before he could grow strong enough to do it harm.**

Everyone looked at Will in fear. Will just calmly sat back and allowed Simon to read.

**In the light from the strange candle, Will held fast to the old lady's frail fingers, and Merriman's wood-hard fist. The shrieking of the Dark grew to an intolerable peak, a high triumphant whinnying, and Will knew without sight that before him in the darkness the great black stallion was rearing up as it had done outside the hut in the woods, with the Rider there to strike him down if the new-shod hooves did not do their work. And no white mare this time could spring from the sky to his rescue.**

**He heard Merriman shout, 'The tree of flame, Will! Strike out with the flame! As you spoke to the fire, speak to the flame, and strike!'**

No one spoke. They needed to know what happened.

**In desperate obedience Will filled his whole mind with the picture of the great circle of tall, fall candle-flames behind him, growing like a white tree; and as he did so, he felt the minds of his two supporters doing the same, knew that the three of them together could accomplish more than he ever imagined. He felt a quick pressure in each hand from the hand holding it, and he struck forward in his mind with the column of light, lashing it out as if it were a giant whip. Over his head there came a vast crashing flash of white light, as the tall flames reared forward and down in a bolt of lightning, and a tremendous shriek from the darkness beyond as something - the Rider, the black stallion, both – fell away, out, down, endlessly down.**

The family let out a collective sigh, Will looked sharply at them all.

"Do you really think that the Dark would be gone that quickly?" He reprimanded them. They stiffened as one, _it wasn't over yet?_

**And in the gap cleft in the darkness there before them, while he still blinked dazzled eyes, stood the two great carved wooden doors through which he had first come into the hall.**

**In the sudden silence Will heard himself shout triumphantly, and he leapt forward, tugging free of the hands that held his own, to run to the doors. **

Barney groaned, "You were really thick, weren't you?" Before Will could defend himself Jane snorted.

"It's not like you did any better," she reminded him. "Everyone is blissfully ignorant before they learn the true cruelty of the Dark."

**Both Merriman and the old lady cried out in warning, but it was too late. Will had broken the circle, he was standing alone.**

"No," everyone groaned.

"Hey," Will drew the attention to himself. "I'm right here. I didn't die, did I?"

"Like you could," Simon muttered to himself. No one noticed Max's eyes widen when he overheard Simon's comment.

**No sooner did he realise it than he felt giddy, and staggered, clutching his head, a strange ringing sound beginning to thrum in his ears. Forcing his legs to move, he lurched to the doors, leaned against them, and beat feebly on them with his fists. They did not move. The eerie ringing in his head grew. He saw Merriman moving up before him, walking with great effort, leaning far forward as though he were straining against a high wind.**

**'Foolish,' Merriman gasped. 'Foolish, Will.' **

Merriman's oldest great nephew said this exactly as Merriman had said it, which caused Will to laugh.

**He seized the doors and shook them, thrusting forward with the strength of both his arms so that the twisted veins beside his brows stood up from the skin like thick wire; and as he did so, he lifted his head and shouted a long commanding phrase that Will did not understand. But the doors did not move, and Will felt weakness drawing him down, as if he were a snow-man melting in the sun.**

Everyone, sans Will, drew in a collective gasp.

**The thing that brought him back to wakefulness, just as he was beginning to drift into a kind of trance, was something he was never able to describe - or even to remember very well. It was like the ending of pain, like discord changing to harmony; like the lightening of the spirits that you may feel suddenly in the middle of a grey dull day, unaccountable until you realise that the sun has begun to shine. This silent music that entered Will's mind and took hold of his spirit came, he knew instantly, from the old lady. Without speech, she was speaking to him. She was speaking to both of them - and to the Dark. He looked back, dazzled; she seemed taller, bigger, more erect than before, a figure on an altogether larger scale. And there was a golden haze about her figure, a glow that did not come from the candlelight.**

Will looked sadly at the floor, "She's still not back yet." He muttered to himself.

**Will blinked, but he could not see clearly; it was as if he were separated from her by a veil. He heard Merriman's deep voice, gentler than he had yet heard it, but wrung with some strong sudden unhappiness. 'Madam,' Merriman said wretchedly. 'Take care, take care.'**

**No voice replied, but Will had a feeling of benison.**

The family let out a breath. Will's mother turned to Will, "It will get better, please Will, tell me that it will get better." Will looked up into her eyes, then looked away.

"No, it will only get worse."

**Then it was gone, and the tall, glowing form that was and yet was not the old lady moved slowly forward in the darkness towards the doors, and for an instant Will heard again the haunting phrase of music that he could never capture in his memory, and the doors slowly opened. Outside there was a grey light and silence, and the air was cold.**

**Behind him, the light of the candle-ring was gone, and there was only darkness. It was an uneasy, empty darkness, so that he knew the hall was no longer there. And suddenly he realised that the luminous golden figure before him was fading too, vanishing away, like smoke that grows thinner, thinner, until it cannot be seen at all. For an instant there was a flash of rose-coloured brilliance from the huge ring that had been on the old lady's hand, and then that too dimmed, and her bright presence faded into nothing.**

"Stupid, stupid…" Will muttered to himself. Jane laid her hand on his shoulder.

"She'll be back soon," She told him.

"But we need the whole Circle now, before the Dark can win." He responded.

"They _won't _win!" Jane cried. "When will you get that through your thick skull? The Dark will not win!"

"You don't know that…" he mumbled low enough that no one heard. He respected her for her courage and didn't want to dampen her sprits.

**Will felt a desperate ache of loss, as if his whole world had been swallowed up by the Dark, and he cried out.**

**A hand touched his shoulder. Merriman was at his side. They were through the doors. Slowly the great wooden carved portals swung back behind them, long enough for Will to see clearly that they were indeed the same strange gates that had opened for him before on the white untrodden slope of a Chiltern hill. Then, at the moment that they closed, the doors too were no longer there. He saw nothing: only the grey light of snow that reflects a grey sky. He was back in the snow-drowned woodland world into which he had walked early that morning.**

The family let out a sigh, he was finally out. Will continued to stare dejectedly at the floor.

**Anxiously he swung round to Merriman. 'Where is she? What happened?**

**'It was too much for her. The strain was too great, even for her. Never before - I have never seen this before.'**

"Yes, because no one has ever been as stupid as to break a circle before…Ow! What was that for?" Jane had whacked him on the shoulder.

"You have a black dog on your shoulder," she replied. "so I was getting him off."

"What?" James was confused again.

"It means that you were upset or mad." Simon told him. "It's a family saying."

** His voice was thick and bitter; he stared angrily at nothing.**

"See! Even Merriman responds that way!" Will protested to Jane.

"that's because he was surprised, not because he was brooding."

**'Have they - taken her?' Will did not know what words to use for the fear.**

**'No!' Merriman said. The word was so quick with scorn it might have been a laugh. 'The Lady is beyond their power. Beyond any power. You will not ask a question like that when you have learned a little. **

The Drews snorted and Bran said, "Yeah, just a little."

"Well for us," Will said. "that knowledge would be just a little."

"Well for humans it isn't, _dewin._"

**She has gone away for a time, that is all. It was the opening of the doors, in the face of all that was willing them shut. Though the Dark could not destroy her, it has drained her, left her like a shell. She must recover herself, away alone, and that is bad for us if we should need her. As we shall. As the world always will.' He glanced down at Will without warmth; suddenly he seemed distant, almost threatening, like an enemy; **

"Is he?" Stephan asked.

"Merriman?" Will replied, chuckling. "No, he is defiantly not the enemy."

**he waved one hand impatiently. 'Close your coat, boy, before you freeze.'**

**Will fumbled with the buttons of his heavy jacket; Merriman, he saw, was wrapped in a long battered blue cloak, high-collared.**

"So much better than having to button a coat" Will said, thinking of his soft, blue cloak that he wore when he was working for the light.

"Why would you wear a cloak?" James asked.

As usual, James was ignored, and the reading continued.

**'It was my fault, wasn't it?' he said miserably. 'If I hadn't run forward, when I saw the doors - if I'd kept hold of your hands, and not broken the circle - '**

**Merriman said curtly: 'Yes.' Then he relented a little. 'But it was their doing, Will, not yours. They seized you, through your impatience and your hope. They love to twist good emotion to accomplish ill.'**

"Yes they do," Barney said. Jane, Bran, and Simon nodded.

**Will stood hunched with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. Behind his mind a chant went sneering through his head: you have lost the Lady, you have lost the Lady. Unhappiness was thick in his throat; he swallowed; he could not speak. A breeze blew through the trees, and sprayed snow-crystals into his face.**

**'Will,' Merriman said. 'I was angry. Forgive me. Whether you had broken the Three or not, things would have been the same. **

Will sighed again; he knew the truth in that statement now that he had read the Book of Gramarye. He wished that he could though.

**The doors are our great gateway into Time, and you will know more about the uses of them before long. But this time you could not have opened them, nor I, nor perhaps any of the circle. For the force that was pushing against them was the full midwinter power of the Dark, which none but the Lady can overcome alone - and even she, only at great cost. Take heart; at the proper time, she will return.'**

Will took those words to heart and straightened back up, _I will not mope, because she will come back._

**He pulled at the high collar of his cloak, and it became a hood that he drew over his head. With the white hair hidden he was a dark figure suddenly, tall and inscrutable. **

"Will?" Barney interrupted. "What does inscrutable mean?"

"It means mysterious," he replied.

"I like it." Barney mused. "Inscrutable. _In_-scra-ti-ble. In-_scra_-tible. It has a nice ring to it and fits Gumerry very well."

**'Come,' he said, and led Will through the deep snow, among great beeches and oaks bare of leaves. At length they paused, in a clearing.**

**'Do you know where you are?' Merriman said.**

"Yes." Will said, while everyone else said. "No."

"You know where you are?" Barbara asked.

"Yes,"

**Will stared round at the smooth snowbanks, the rearing trees. 'Of course I don't,' he said. 'How could I?'**

"See." Barbara said. "You didn't know where you were."

"I did," Will replied mysteriously. "But I didn't know that I did."

**'Yet before the winter is three-quarters done,' Merriman said, 'You will be creeping into this dell to look at the snow-drops that grow everywhere between the trees. And then in the spring you will be back to stare at the daffodils. Every day for a week, to judge from last year.'**

The boys in the family just looked at him admusadly. James spoke, "You stare at _daffodils?_

"I used to." Corrected Will.

"Why?"

"It was peaceful."

**Will gaped at him. 'You mean the Manor?' he said. 'The Manor grounds?'**

"You stare at _daffodils _at the _Manor?_"

"Did."

"What is the Manor?" asked Jane.

Simon, who had read ahead, responded, "The book will tell us."

**In his own century, Huntercombe Manor was the great house of the village. The house itself could not be seen from the road, but its grounds lay along the side of Huntercombe Lane opposite the Stantons' house, and stretched a long way in each direction, edged alternately by tall wrought-iron railings and ancient brick walls. A Miss Greythorne owned it, as her family had for centuries, **

Will snorted, _yeah, her family._ He waved off the questioning looks.

**but Will did not know her well; He seldom saw her or her Manor, which he remembered vaguely as a mass of tall brick gables and Tudor chimneys. The flowers that Merriman had spoken of were private land-marks in his year. **

**For as long as he could remember, he had slipped through the Manor railings at the end of winter to stand in this one magical clearing and gaze at the gentle winter-banishing snowdrops, **

James laughed again and Will just rolled his eyes.

**and later the golden daffodil-glow of spring. He did not know who had planted the flowers; he had never seen anyone visiting them. He was not even sure whether anyone else knew they were there. The image of them glowed now in his mind.**

**But rearing questions very soon chased it out. 'Merriman? Do you mean this clearing is here hundreds of years before I first saw it? And the great hall, is it a Manor before the Manor, out of centuries ago? And the forest all round us, that I came through when I saw the smith and the Rider - it stretches everywhere, does it all belong to - '**

"So you're in Huntercombe, but centuries ago?" Gwen asked.

"Pretty much," Will replied.

"You _time traveled?_" James shouted jumping up.

"Yes," Will said. "I time travel all the time."

The family stared at Will.

**Merriman looked down at him and laughed, a gay laugh, suddenly without the heaviness that had been over them both.**

**'Let me show you something else,' he said, and he drew Will further through the trees, away from the clearing, until there was an end to the sequence of trunks and mounds of snow. And before him Will saw not the morning's narrow track that he had been expecting, winding its way through an endless forest of ancient crowding trees - but the familiar twentieth-century line of Huntercombe Lane, and beyond it, an little way up the road, a glimpse of his own house. The Manor railings were before them, somewhat shortened by the deep snow; Merriman stepped stiff-legged over, Will crept through his usual gap, and they were standing on the snow-banked road.**

"Was that you traveling back?" asked Stephan, who was still trying to get over the fact that his little brother was magical.

"Yes." Will replied, turning to him.

"How do you travel through time?"

"I think the book will explain, if not, you have three questions."

**Merriman put back his hood again, and lifted his white-maned head as if to sniff the air of this newer century. 'You see, Will,' he said, 'we of the Circle are planted only loosely within Time. The doors are a way through it, in any direction we may choose. For all times co-exist, and the future can sometimes affect the past, even though the past is a road that leads to the future . . . **

Will nodded, he remembered this. The humans in the room were trying to wrap their minds around this.

"How can the future affect the past?" asked Mary.

Will thought for a second, "I think that this would be a good question at the end of the chapter.

**But men cannot understand this. Nor will you for a while yet. We can travel through the years in other ways too - one of them was used this morning to bring you back through five centuries or so. That is where you were - in the time of the**

**Royal Forests, that stretched over all the southern part of this land from Southampton Water up to the valley of the Thames here.'**

"There used to be forests where we are?" asked Robin.

"Yes." Will was starting to get tired of the pointless questions. "There used to be forests everywhere."

The family wondered if he knew from experience.

**He pointed across the road to the flat horizon, and Will remembered how he had seen the Thames twice that morning: once among its familiar fields, once buried instead among trees. He stared at the intensity of remembering on Merriman's face.**

**'Five hundred years ago,' **

"He _remembers _five hundred years ago?" Barbara exclaimed.

Will finally was sick off the stupid questions, "He is the oldest of the Old Ones who are the Guardians of the Light and are not bound by time. Of _course_ he remembers the fifteenth century!" The family was surprised by the outburst. Jane considered whacking him again but she was fed up with the comments as well.

**Merriman said, 'the kings of England chose deliberately to preserve those forests, swallowing up whole villages and hamlets inside them, so that the wild things, the deer and the boars and even the wolves, might breed there for the hunt. But forests are not biddable places, and the kings were without knowing it establishing a haven too for the powers of the Dark, **

Bran and the Drews winced. _A haven for the Dark…_

**which might otherwise have been driven back then to the mountains and remotenesses of the North ... So that is where you were until now, Will. In the forest of Anderida, as they used to call it. In the long gone past. You were there in the beginning of the day, walking through the forest in the snow; there on the empty hillside of the Chilterns; still there when you had first walked through the doors - that was a symbol, your first walking, for your birthday as one of the Old Ones. And there, in that past, is where we left the Lady. I wish that I knew where and when we shall see her again. But come she will, when she can.' He shrugged, as if to shake away the heaviness again. 'And now you can go home, for you are in your own world.'**

"So…" Stephan trailed off.

"What?" Will asked.

"I'm not sure if this is a good enough question, since the others seemed to be stupid."

Will laughed. "It wasn't the questions, it was the echo." The family looked at him in confusion. "The book would say something then one of you would echo it with a disbelieving voice."

"Oh," most of the family voiced.

"So what was your question?"

Stephan looked at him. "I was going to ask if Old Ones even could belong in a certain time."

Will felt like he had ran into a wall. _Do I really stand out that much? Does he really not think that I belong here?_

Stephan watched Will's face and from the look on it Will wasn't reacting calmly to this question.

"Sorry," Stephan tried. "It was an obvious question for you, wasn't it?"

"No," Will replied softly. "That's not it. Can we just save this for the end?"

"Sure,"

Jane leaned over and whispered in his ear. He whispered back. She glanced up at the family then said to him, "I don't think they will."

**'And you are in it too,' said Will.**

**Merriman smiled. 'Back again. With mixed feelings.'**

**'Where will you go?'**

**'About and roundabout. I have a place in this present time, just as you do. **

The Drews smiled to each other. They were his place in this time.

**Go home now, Will. The next stage in the quest depends on the Walker, and he will find you. And when his circle is on your belt beside the first, I shall come.'**

**'But - ' Will suddenly wanted to clutch at him, to beg him not to go away. His home no longer seemed quite the unassailable fortress it had always been.**

**'You will be all right,' Merriman said gently. 'Take things as they come. Remember that the power protects you. Do nothing rash to draw trouble towards you, **

Though Will as still worried about Stephan's question he did chuckle a little, _if only I'd remembered that one._

**and all will be well. And we shall meet soon, I promise you.'**

**'All right,' Will said uncertainly.**

**An odd gust of wind eddied round them, in the still morning, and gobbets of snow spattered down from the roadside trees. Merriman drew his cloak around him, its bottom edge swirling a pattern in the snow; he gave Will one sharp look, of warning and encouragement mixed, pulled his hood forward over his face, and strode off down the road without a word. He disappeared round the bend beside Rooks' Wood, on the way to Dawsons' Farm.**

"Of course, I can't believe I didn't notice that this first time." Will exclaimed.

"Notice what?" Barney asked. Will whispered something in Barney, Jane, Simon, and Bran's ears.

**Will took a deep breath, and ran home. The lane was silent in the deep snow and the grey morning; no birds moved or chirped; nothing stirred anywhere. The house too was utterly quiet. He shed his outdoor clothes, went up the silent stairs. On the landing he stood looking out at the white roofs and fields. No great forest mantled the earth now. The snow was as deep, but it was smooth over the flat fields of the valley, all the way to the curving Thames.**

**'All right, all right,' said James sleepily from inside his room.**

**From behind the next door, Robin gave a kind of formless growl and mumbled, 'In a minute. Coming.'**

**Gwen and Margaret came stumbling together out of the bedroom they shared, wearing nightdresses, rubbing their eyes. 'There's no need to bellow,' Margaret said reproachfully to Will. **

"See?" Will asked. "I hadn't shouted that time."

**'Bellow?' He stared at her.**

**'Wake up everyone' she said in a mock shout. 'I mean, it's a holiday, for goodness' sake.'**

**Will said, 'But I - '**

**'Never mind,' Gwen said. 'You can forgive him for wanting to wake us up today. After all, he has a good reason.' And she came forward and dropped a quick kiss on the top of his head.**

**'Happy birthday, Will,' she said.**

"That's the end of the chapter." Simon said. Everyone remained silent for a moment then Will's father broke the silence.

"So, it's question time. Who wants to ask questions?" Luckily, only Max, Barbara, and Stephan raised their hands so it was easy to decide on the questions.

Max went first. "So, I know that you said that an Old One is a Guardian of the Light and is not bound by time, but does that mean that they are immortal?"

The whole family stiffened, because no one else had wondered this.

Will thought for a moment, "Define _immortal_."

It was Max's turn to think for a moment, "Unable to die."

Will sighed, "I was hoping that you wouldn't use those words. If immortal means unable to _die_, then yes us Old Ones are immortal. We can be blown outside of time, unable to return, but no we cannot _die._"

The family thought for a few minutes. Then Barbara took her turn.

"Merriman mentioned that the future is able to affect the past. Please explain that."

"If you remember," he started to explain. "Then Merriman went on to say that men cannot understand this."

"Please try,"

"First I will say that there are different ways to explain this. I'm going to describe it as a road. The destination changes the road.

"For example if you are going to a place that everyone is also going to, then the road will be wide and well paved, but if you are going to a place that is rarely visited then the path will be rough, steep, and narrow. Or, in this case, if you are going to a place that everyone wants, few people can get to, and many people don't want you to reach, then the path is normal with other obstacles added." Will paused to let this sink in. He was dreading the last question because he knew that it would be Stephan's. "What is the last question?"

Stephan asked this time. "If Old Ones are outside of time then do they actually _belong _in any time?" Will couldn't fully hide his emotions and he grimaced.

He replied in a low whisper, "I was hoping that you would forget that one." Will's family watched him seem so scared. Jane set her hand on his shoulder.

"They won't." she said, comfortingly.

"How do you know?" Will replied, shakily.

"Because they are your _family,_" Will straightened back up and took a deep breath.

"Most _humans_ would think that Old Ones do not _belong_ in any time or that they can never really understand the mortal world." Will stopped and went back to staring at the floor.

"Go on,"

"But humans cannot understand Old Ones, except Bran here. Old Ones are born to be Old Ones, not born as Old Ones. We are born the same as humans: same emotions, same dreams, same childhood. When we turn eleven we grow into our powers, as the High Magic requires. We are taken to read the Book of Gramarye. When we read the Book we gain the knowledge. It teaches us all of the spells, all of the laws, and all of our duties. Old Ones still hold their human emotions but we know that we must give up our own lives for the Light." Will stopped to take a breath. "We feel like we belong in the time that we were born in and in the times that we have major influence. Only humans think that we don't belong."

"That makes sense," Stephan said. "But, why did you respond so badly when you asked that?"

Will looked him in the eye; Stephan could see the pain in Will's eyes. Will looked away.

"I don't think that you need to know that." Will told him.

"Yes, I do." Stephan told him. "Is it an insult to Old Ones or something?"

"Stephan, right?" Jane butted in. "It isn't an insult to Old Ones. Most of them are used to being asked things like that. It wasn't the question, it was the asker."

"What did I do wrong?" Jane looked over at Will. He took a shaken breath.

"It wasn't something that you did." Will took a moment to gain his thoughts.

"Stephan, you asking me that would be the equivalent of me asking you if you belonged in this family. You flat out asked me if I could even belong to any time, meaning you asked me if I could even belong in a family. You implied that I didn't belong in this family."

Stephan looked shocked. "I didn't mean that!"

"You asked if Old Ones could even belong in a time. You implied that they couldn't. You forgot one thing: that your brother is an Old One who belongs in _your _time in _your_ family. You asked me if I _could even_ belong in a certain time."

"I didn't mean you!"

Now Will went from scared to slightly mad. "Oh? And who did you mean? The other type of Old One? Just the other Old Ones? Or who, then? Because you seemed to have forgotten that I am an _Old One!_"

Everyone sat in a shocked silence.

"I didn't want to tell you that I was an Old One for this exact reason. I knew that one day you would decide that was abnormal enough and kick me out of family."

Will was done he stood up and walked out the door.

"I'll be back." Jane and Bran said in unison and they both bolted out of the door after the Sign-Seeker.

* * *

><p><strong>(1) <strong>_The Gray King _


	6. You, Of All People, Should Know

Dear Readers,

It has been brought to my attention that some of you may not have gotten my joke on my last update. When I said that I was stealing my best friend's boyfriend I was bringing up an inside joke between some of my friends at school. My friend Jana likes to joke that she is engaged to "Procrastination" (as in when you push something off until the last minute). I will joke back that he must be cheating on her because I am a horrible procrastinator. I would NEVER hurt my friends like that. I would NEVER try to steal their boyfriends. I did not mean to make myself look that way. I'm sorry if you thought that about me.

It's time for me to apologize for not updating. I do not have all of DiR typed up so that I can write to comments only. So I do not have the next chapter ready. I have written the next part and was waiting to update with the next chapter but I feel that you all deserve to read a little bit. In case anyone is interested this story is always up for adoption. I will continue to write (at a sporadic and slow pace) on this story, but if anyone else would enjoy writing this, feel free.

I have a couple of shout-outs: phyonix rises and kerryfri. Phyonix rises: you have been my most loyal reader and want to thank you. You really should get an account. They make enjoying FanFiction easier and better.

-Liza

* * *

><p>Jane and Bran found Will walking down the Old Way Lane. <em>Good thing he didn't turn into a bird or something,<em> Bran thought. They tried to catch up with him; he was walking quickly away from his home.

"Will!" Jane called. He ignored her. "Will, slow down!" He kept on walking.

"Will," Bran tried. "Will, stop!" Will stopped short, and then turned around slowly.

"What?" he snapped. They caught up to him.

"Will-" Jane started to say, but was cut off by Will.

"They don't want me!" he yelled. "They think that I am a freak who can't find a place in this time…no, in _any_ time. They don't care about me anymore! They-" Will was cut off by a hand slapping him hard on the cheek. Will stared at Jane dumbfounded.

"Will Stanton!" she hissed between her teeth. "They do _not_ hate you. They do _not_ think that you are a freak. They _do_ care for you. They. Are. Your. Family."

"But-"

"No! Because you are both a part of that family and an Old One, you should know that your family would _never _abandon you."

Will stared at the ground for a moment before replying. "Then why did he ask me that? I knew that he couldn't handle the information when I tried to explain but I hoped that with the book…"

"He's in shock." Bran said. "You remember when Cafall died. I blamed you and all of the Light because I was in shock. I still hadn't quite gotten over what was going on and I didn't want to blame my own race. They just found out that their _brother _and _son_ is an immortal, magical being who has a whole life away from them. They are regular humans so they can't understand all of this as quickly as you can."

Will looked up at his two best friends, "I know, I just…"

"It's okay to be scared, but you should know that you have nothing to be afraid of. I know that it is difficult for you to balance all of this right now. You need to be Will Stanton, Sign-Seeker for us. You need to be Will Stanton, Brother/Son for your family. And you don't know what's coming." Jane comforted him.

"We know that it's hard. But you need to go back to your family. Come on," Bran said, turning back toward the house.

The three walked slowly back to Will's home.

_**Back at the House:**_

The Stanton family watched the youngest brother walk away from the house and saw his friends chase after him. They couldn't believe that Will was such a powerful creature. They sat in a shocked silence.

Finally Stephan tried to say something, "I…I di…How could I?" he asked them miserably. They shifted their looks from the window to the oldest Stanton child. He was staring at the floor in shock. The family didn't know what to say.


	7. UP FOR ADOPTION

Dear Readers,

This story is up for adoption.

I cannot type up the entire book and there are no places to get the book or free. Besides, the site may delete this fic anyway.

If you want this, just use copy and paste. I'm not picky. I would like you to tell me so that I can read what awsomeness you write for it.

Enjoy your lives, readers.

-Liza


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